Painful upgrade from Edgy x86_64 to Feisty x86_64

If it works, don’t touch it. This is one of my mottoes. I have broken this rule just yesterday when I decided that I was too lazy to install Pidgin from source, and decided I wanted it to be installed directly from deb. Unfortunately, there was no pidgin deb for Edgy. None that I was able to find.

My computer has been suggesting to be upgraded for a while now – ever since Feisty was available. I was cautious and avoided upgrading up until now. I have already installed Feisty on my laptop, on one of my servers (installed Edgy and then upgraded to Feisty with no special events), so I was somehow more at ease. This was, of course, a complete disaster.

Upgrading Edgy to Feisty went OK. Nothing really special, no external sources, nothing. After upgrade, the system failed to reboot – just hung there. It appears (and I have yet to post a bug) that my IT8212 IDE controller (which is connected to my CDROM) hangs the computer.

Not only that, but even when disabled, it appears that Feisty’s kernel has an issue with sata_iix. The issue was solved using post #59 from this bug report. Do not follow, though, this recommendation (all_generic_ide) as you will experience a noticeable performance hit.

I was able to boot my system. No CDROM, but working. I have installed NVidia drivers manually, as the restricted modules were too old. I was required to remove the nvidia entries in /etc/modprobe.d/lrm-video (probably because I’ve installed restricted modules and later on removed it). Had X running, but didn’t have Beryl working. Past experience taught me that AIGLX or direct NVidia DRI are slower than XGL. Attempting to use XGL, I get the white-screen-of-death. Following this guide, I was able to setup XGL correctly, as it seems. It did not solve my white-screen-of-death, however, using –use-copy flag things worked, and seemed to be responding fast enough.

Still have to open a bug about the IT8212 device. Hope for the best.