So on Friday my workstation blew up … which goes some way to explaining why this server has been down for much of the weekend (it’s a container on my workstation). The operating system boot drive magically went read-only – which as some of us know is a clear indication that an SSD is on its last legs. Or a few steps beyond.
So I re-installed on a new drive, and for various reasons I chose Ubuntu Server again. An upgrade which made things a bit more interesting.
Now whilst I know that most servers are installed in ways other than interactively, but the interactive experience is bloody awful.
For a start, if the text console is a ridiculous large size – perhaps $COLUMNS is greater than 160, then change the bloody console font. It may be a rare case that someone is installing Ubuntu server on a screen where the resolution is so high, but it can (and in my case does) make the text far too small to read.
And secondly, do something about the logical volume manager creation; I wanted to create a logical volume with a name other than “ubuntu-vg” (the old drive was still readable and creating two VGs with the same name struck me as a dumb idea). The default method didn’t seem to offer a way to rename the VG; the custom method kept giving me an installation error.
The later could possibly be my mistake – I was reduced to using a magnifying glass.
And yes everything is working now.
But sort out that installer!
