Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on Bytemark VM

If, like me, you can’t wait for Ubuntu 12.04.1 to be released, you can force an upgrade of your favourite OS OS.

sudo apt-get update;
sudo do-release-upgrade -d

If you are going from the previous LTS 10.04, then the -d is important. Otherwise there would be no upgrade to offer.

The upgrade process should go smoothly enough. Except for when it comes to the kernel.

Bytemark VM’s make use of kernels that sit outside of the VM itself.

I didn’t realise this until I tried to fix syslog doing this:

Jun 26 10:30:01 banana kernel: Cannot read proc file system: 1 - Operation not permitted.
Jun 26 10:31:02 banana kernel: last message repeated 1745888 times
Jun 26 10:32:03 banana kernel: last message repeated 1722636 times
Jun 26 10:33:04 banana kernel: last message repeated 1621724 times
Jun 26 10:34:05 banana kernel: last message repeated 1761707 times</pre>

Even if you update grub, it’ll be ignored. Instead, follow the instructions here: http://www.bytemark.co.uk/support/technical_documents/kernelchange?tags=VirtualMachine

At the time of writing, I chose 3.2.0-kvm-i386-20110111 as it’s fairly close to the kernel being used by other Ubuntu 12.04 machines I have.

Your mileage may vary, but I hope this helps somebody else with the same trouble.