Ubuntu – Migrating a Wubi install and Drivers, and data when the Wubi install is messed up

driversmigrationwubi

I accidentally installed a non-functional video driver using the Jockey tool. That lead to me only seeing this on a reboot.

Which leads to my question: I read up on migrating my Wubi install, and I think it's time for me to format over XP (don't know why I hold on to it, since I have Windows 7 on that tower as well) and install Ubuntu on my second hard drive. I'm ready to copy my root.disk off of my computer, but I have a question with the migration process.

I borked something up bad on my Wubi install, so if I were to migrate my data from my Wubi install's virtual disk to my upcoming 12.04 install done the old-fashioned way, would my mistakes carry over to my new install? I don't think I'll lose anything of importance, but if I have the chance to recover that stuff, I'd like to take it.

Best Answer

First let's fix what happened on the other question.

You shouldn't just apt-get remove video drivers. You should use jockey-gtk to switch between open drivers and closed drivers.
Press CTL+ALT+F1 to get to a terminal. Log in.

Update
sudo apt-get update
Get the latest packages
sudo apt-get upgrade
Make sure the driver switcher is installed
sudo apt-get install jockey-common
Update the driver database
sudo jockey-text -u
Get a list of all drivers available
sudo jockey-text -m any -l
Install one, just wait. It takes a bit and there's no feedback on progress.
sudo jockey-text -e xorg:nvidia-current
Make sure changes are written to disk
sync
Check to see that it's installed but not active yet
sudo jockey-text -m any -l
Restart
sudo init 6

You should now get to a GUI on boot. You can use the additional drivers tool(jockey-gtk) to disable the binary driver if you want and it will enable the noveau driver for you. Or you can just leave it if you don't want to mess with it once it's working. enter image description here

Then the migration process should be straightforward. It's documented here.
And yes, if you migrate it will carry almost all of your settings and almost all of your files.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Wubi Installer Error: The boot configuration data store could not be opened

Go to an administrative command prompt and run bcdedit. This will open your BCD store and output the contents. If it fails with the same exception message then your problem is that Windows needs to be told where the BCD store is. i.e. nothing to do with Wubi (which is what I believe).

To open an administrative command prompt click the Windows key, type cmd, then look above, right click on CMD.EXE and select Run as Administrator.

Refer to Issue 3 here for explanation and potential fix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2419286

Edit: more information and fix from the Microsoft support site

Symptoms

When you run Bcdedit /enum you get the following error: “The boot configuration data store could not be opened. The system cannot find the file specified.”

Look for the following registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\BCD00000000

If we check under HKLM you will not find the key BCD00000000

Cause

If some 3rd party storage Disk or Storage Management software is installed it may bring all the volume without drive letter offline

Generally 100 MB partition is system partition which contains Boot configuration Database and does not have a drive letter assigned.

Resolution

From an administrator command prompt (right-click CMD.EXE and choose Run as Administrator):

C:\>Diskpart
C:\Diskpart> List volume
C:\Diskpart> Select volume 1 (Considering this is 100 MB system partition)
c:\Diskpart> Online volume
C:\Diskpart> exit

Ubuntu – Migrating the / volume

Yes, the method you describe will work assuming neither disk is your current root/active partition (since they're both under /mnt/ it looks like you're OK.

Also, you're right that since md devices are involved, it's probably best not to dd the entire partition. That would also need you to grow the filesystem, a step that can be avoided using rsync which is perfectly safe in this case.

A few comments:

No need to worry about special filesystems like /dev, /proc, /sys, /run; since neither disk is your current root partition, these filesystems are not mounted (let's say they're not "live") and all they contain are files. Some of the file are "special" (maybe fifos or block/char special files) but these copy over OK.
No need for -z in your rsync line; since it's a local copy and I assume the hard disks are fast enough, it's faster if you avoid the compress/decompress overhead.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Wubi Installer Error: The boot configuration data store could not be opened

Ubuntu – Migrating the / volume

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