I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 with no issues, thinking back to when I first installed Arduino on 8.10 I seem to recall I had problems not having the correct version of Java Installed. I seem to remember it had to be real 'Sun' java not the open source stuff. In synaptic package manager, remove any existing Java and install what I have :
I just unarchived the downloaded arduino tar into my home folder. The standard version of the rest of the pre-requisites work OK for me
I'm on 32 bit which may have a bearing if you aren't.
First, when you plug in the Arduino, does it create a /dev/ttyUSB* node?
Do you get any messages in /var/log/messages or dmesg|tail ?
Second, in Ubuntu make sure that your user account is a member of the uucp group. This will give you access to the USB-to-serial ports /dev/ttyUSB*.
Third, when you start up the arduino IDE do you get any errors from the rxtx library ? (If you've created an icon/menu item to run the IDE, run a terminal and load the IDE so you can see any error messages).
[ 3136.680783] usb 3-1: device not accepting address 39, error -71
[ 3136.680814] hub 3-0:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 1
[ 3465.247605] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
[ 3465.247622] USB Serial support registered for generic
[ 3465.247639] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[ 3465.247642] usbserial: USB Serial Driver core
[ 3465.276078] USB Serial support registered for FTDI USB Serial Device
[ 3465.276156] usbcore: registered new interface driver ftdi_sio
[ 3465.276160] ftdi_sio: v1.4.3:USB FTDI Serial Converters Driver
[ 4140.312061] Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -287957131 ns)
You get permission denied messages because /var/log/messages amd /dev/ttyUSB0 aren't executables, its perfectly normal. To see the contents of /var/log/messages use
cat /var/log/messages
This may be very long in which case you can use :
cat /var/log/messages|tail
which will display the last 10 lines.
cat /var/log/messages|tail -n 100
will display the last 100 lines
I wouldn't recommend using cat with /dev/ttyUSB0 since it isn't a file. It can be used to pull serial data from a running arduino, but thats another story.
doing dmesg|tail on my system, just after I plug the arduino in gives
[ 583.901117] usb 2-1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 603.056138] usb 2-1: USB disconnect, address 5
[ 603.056641] ftdi_sio ttyUSB0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0
[ 603.056683] ftdi_sio 2-1:1.0: device disconnected
[ 8010.141517] hda-intel: IRQ timing workaround is activated for card #0. Suggest a bigger bdl_pos_adj.
[ 8010.560051] usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 6
[ 8010.757821] usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 8010.760651] ftdi_sio 2-1:1.0: FTDI USB Serial Device converter detected
[ 8010.760980] usb 2-1: Detected FT232RL
[ 8010.761082] usb 2-1: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0
the numbers in brackets are the number of seconds since the computer was last started up. The stuff at 8010.***** is relevent to the arduino being plugged in. It would seem you don't have a ttyUSBx which may be relevent to your problem. Is the board known to be working ?