This is what I used to install Ubuntu on my virtual server.

• Virtual PC2007 sp1, (get it here).
• Ubuntu Alternate CD, (get it here).

Create a virtual machine with enough resource, I chose 1024Mb of memory and 30Gb disk space. I think the minimum requirement is 256Mb of memory or something like that but if you can spare 1Gb of memory, use it .

Start the virtual machine and go to CD->Capture ISO image…, (you might need to reset the virtual machine afterwards if, like me, you are not quick enough).

When Ubuntu start it should pickup your ‘CD/ISO image’, you then choose your language
At this point if you try to do the install it will not work, this is because the install program does not ‘guess’ what your video mode is, (after all it is a virtual machine, so you cannot blame Ubuntu for guessing wrong).
So you need to tell it what to use.

To do that when you see the Install Ubuntu menu, (make sure that it is highlighted) . Press F6 and then press esc again to close the menu, (I know, I know there are other ways of doing it, but this way is good enough).

You will see a new line at the bottom that will say ‘Boot Options‘ at move your cursor, (with the arrows), to the end of the line. It should say something like “… quiet –“, delete that and replace it with “ noreplace-paravirt vga=791” and press enter to start the install.
The rest of the install should be fairly straight forward.

A couple of notes:

Select ‘No’ when asked to setup the keyboad, it will then ask you what country you are in and what country your keyboard comes from, otherwise Ubuntu will ask you to test your keyboad.

Be careful when choosing a username and password, remember that this is all case sensitive and the username must start lower case.

I chose not to encrypt the directory.

That’s it, enjoy Ubuntu 9.0.4.

I also descided to update my computer so now I have a x64 machine with 4Gb of memory, truth be told, I have not really noticed anything ‘outstanding’ with it yet, maybe my old computer was not so bad after all.

Maybe one day I’ll write myself a little app to backup all those settings so in case of a crash not as much data is lost.

I am actually quite happy that I copy all my code in 3 different locations, imagine if I had lost all my code, that would not have been fun.

But anyway, I guess it happens from time to time, I just have to re-install everything and I should be ready to go.

Everybody is more than welcome to create an account and log new bugs, I chose Mantis as it seems to be a fairly ‘up-to-date’  online application.
I am new it, so I might make some mistakes as I go along, so please, bear with me.

I am very keen to do another stable release, but I first have to finish the database import application as it is still a bit ‘clunky’, I want the users to be able to click on one button only to load the database, (a bit like the aircrafts are been imported curently).

I am very busy at work and sadly I cannot work on Courseplanner as much as I would like. But once most of the bugs have been ironed out of the import function I will be able to continue working on various other bugs/features that have been reported on the forum.

Even this Easter weekend, (a bank holiday on Friday an Monday for us), I was not really able to do much. The wife and I went to visit some friends about a 100 miles from our home, (a good 4 hours round trip at least).
And to make matters worse I also had to  do some DIY work around the house, (the shower will never be the same!, I should really stick to programming).

But here I am now, trying to get back to work and finish the map work I have been putting off for far too long.

In courseplanner version 3 the map was actually a set of points of the world that was drawn. The result was a far from picture perfect image but it worked rather well when zooming in really close, (about as close as an airport for example).
So I am going to re-add the outlining and try to ‘marry’ the NASA photo realistic image with the outline drawing.

Another option is to offer the 600Mb map of the world to the users. Maybe ship it to them via CD or something, (maybe allow a download?) This will partly solve the problem and make the image even more realistic, (the definition is 50M or something like that. So the map should be close to ‘perfect’ I hope.

But, before I do that, let me finish the outline. I see that a few flight planners offer the outline to simplify the view, so let me also try it.

As I am on leave for the next few days I will try and get it all done in 3 or 4 days.

I still need to make a few changes, especially the map, it is obviously a bigger eyesore than I expected,  so I will need to look into it as soon as possible.
As I want to keep Courseplanner as ’stand-alone’ as possible, (because of future support for X-Plane), I need to think of a simple way to display the map as ‘clearly’ as possible without depending on X-Plane or Flight Simulator.

I think that importing sectional maps might be a good idea, so if people want a ‘high definition’ map of a certain area then they will need to download it from various sites. I might make it flexible enough to upload to this site as well, (so others can download it).

I also want to add support for X-Plane, I am sure it won’t hurt to have more input from such a large comunity.

As alway I am looking for any suggestions/bug reports, anything to improve Courseplanner. So feel free to visit the forum and throw in your suggestions.

So, feel free to download version 4.0.0(152) and report any problems you might come across.

I will now concentrate on some of the other requests that have been sent to me and to make Courseplanner as stable as possible. Feel fee to send me as many requests as you want.
I am also looking at adding support for X-Plane, I can’t promise anything but seen that it took a month to add FS9 I am guessing it should take about the same amount of time.

What also took a bit of time was re-uploading almost all the missing images that I deleted by mistake, (and I also updated the new version of MediaWiki, (1.14.0), for the online document).

Effectively this means that I have spent most of the morning uploading/fixing missing files from the backup.

To my suprise, I also noticed that my backup does not include most of the pictures in the document, so I will need to re-upload them all one by one.
Needless to say, I will make sure they are included in the next backup.