Requirements

Before installing, please ensure that you have zenity (used for the GUI), and GRUB (used as the bootloader) installed. If not, install zenity and grub using emerge, apt-get, yum, yast2, or your distribution's equivalent. For Ubuntu and Debian, these should already have been installed.

This has been tested on Sabayon 3.3 32-bit, PCLinuxOS 2007 32-bit, openSUSE 10.2 32-bit, Gentoo 2007.0 32-bit, Fedora Core 6 32-bit, Debian Sid 32-bit, Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy 32-bit, Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty 32-bit, and Xubuntu 7.04 Feisty 32-bit as the host systems. Kubuntu 7.04 Feisty 32-bit, Xubuntu 7.04 Feisty 32-bit, and Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty 32-bit were tested as guest systems. Other Linux-based operating systems should work as hosts as well, just make sure you have the packages listed above installed. Lubi will not work on any systems using LVM, EVMS, or another logical volume manager, or filesystems other than ext2, ext3, reiserfs, jfs, or xfs (for vfat and ntfs use Wubi).

Installing

1. If using Debian, Ubuntu, or their derivatives, download the deb file, otherwise download the tar.bz2 file from the download page.

2. Install the package, or extract the tar.bz2 file into the root filesystem

3. In the terminal, become root, using either "sudo su" in ubuntu and other sudo-based distros, or "su root".

4. Then run the command: "lubi"

5. Answer the questions asked by the wizard, wait while the iso is downloaded, the disk images are created, and the grub entry is added, and you will then be prompted to reboot; reboot.

6. Upon rebooting, the GRUB menu should have a new line at the end, saying "Ubuntu". Select that one, and it will start the d-i installer in non-interactive mode, and will reboot again

7. Select "Ubuntu" in GRUB to boot your newly installed ubuntu, then upon booting, login with the username and password you supplied to the installer

Uninstalling

These commands will remove your loopmounted Ubuntu install, and undo the changes to GRUB. They are supposed to be entered in the terminal on the host system (NOT in the guest Ubuntu install)

If using the deb version, enter this command to remove: "sudo dpkg --purge lubi"

For the tar.bz2 version, enter these commands:

sudo rm -r /wubi
sudo rm /usr/share/applications/lubi.desktop
sudo rm /usr/share/menu/lubi
sudo mv /boot/grub/menu.lst.bak /boot/grub/menu.lst

Transferring to a dedicated partition

To "upgrade" to a real "ubuntu" install, see the LVPM page.

A more detailed guide, and the support forum for Lubi is located here.