After installing 13.04 I'm back to 12.04 after boot

[Weyland]

I installed Kubuntu 13.04 and there were no apparent problems. That took about 15 minutes. I told it to replace the existing system (12.04). After restarting as instructed I get exactly the same boot menu as before, and 12.04 starts as usual, with no differences whatsoever.

So I installed it again. This time it said it was replacing 13.04. Same behaviour -- I'm back to 12.04, completely unchanged as far as I can see. System Monitor says 12.04.

[COLOR="#CC7A00"]cat /proc/version[/COLOR]
Linux version 3.2.0-40-generic-pae (buildd@roseapple) (gcc version 4.6.3 (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.6.3-1ubuntu5) ) #64-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 25 21:44:41 UTC 2013

[COLOR="#CC7A00"]cat /etc/*release[/COLOR]
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="12.04.2 LTS, Precise Pangolin"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu precise (12.04.2 LTS)"
VERSION_ID="12.04"

Never seen anything like this before. Any ideas?

[Weyland]

I've now found 13.04, on a disk I hadn't planned to use, but I don't know how to add it to the boot menu, or why it wasn't added during installation. And I don't know how to get it to use the old /home. Anyone?

[oshunluvr]

Presumably, you installed the newer version of GRUB on the "other" disk as well. Updating your current version of GRUB should detect the new install assuming the disk is available when you run the update. In a terminal:

sudo update-grub

As far as using your old /home - I don't recommend it as configuration files may have changed causing some small issues, but to do so anyway - you didn't say whether or not your old home is a separate partition or not. The methods would vary somewhat.

Assuming a separate partition:

1. Mount the 13.04 root partition somewhere.

EXAMPLE:

sudo mkdir /mnt/newroot
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/newroot

2. Edit your fstab file to use your previous /home partition:

EXAMPLE:

kdesudo kate /mnt/newroot/etc/fstab

Add this line:

/dev/sda3 /home ext4 defaults 0 2

save and exit Kate.

The above examples assume EXT4 file system type and device ID's. Use the correct ones for your /home partition.

If your old /home is NOT on a separate partition, you will need to create a mounting location for the 12.04 install and then mount it and bind mount to the /home folder. Not a big deal, just one more step and one more fstab line.

As a matter of policy for multi-booting several installs, I do not advocate sharing /home partitions for the reason I stated above. Often, new upgrade installs suffer from config file "overlap" and you might also unintentionally carry forward some misconfiguration from a previous version. My preferred method for data sharing is to create a separate /data partition that contains the various data folders (Documents, Downloads, etc.) , email folders, virtualbox data, and so on. Then either symlink or bind mount to the data from each install. It's slightly more work to set up, but performs better if you often boot to several installs.

On the other hand, if you do not plan on using the old install except as a last resort backup; I suggest now is the time to create a separate /home partition and start using it.

[Weyland]

Thank you, oshunluvr. I'd more or less come to the same conclusion myself, but it's good to have confirmation from an expert.

I'm annoyed that the 13.04 installation process formatted a disk without asking, but it was backed up in any case. Not good though. Never had a problem like that in any other Linux installation.

I'll keep both 12.04 and 13.04 until I'm happy, transferring the important old /home stuff to a /data directory as I go along, and then clear the 12.04 disk.

Thanks again.

[And it didn't update grub.cfg. I've checked.]