[Bug 876146] Re: Upgrading Ubuntu is risky (unusable or unbootable PC). The Upgrade Popup does not warn of the risks or offers fail-safe alternatives. This is a mouse trap for unsuspecting users.

[Subharo Bhikkhu]

I have been using some kind of linux distro since 1997, and in all that
time, I have never, ever been "done like this" before.  I have a few
specific egregious gripes to add, after dragging myself out of a
horrendous upgrade.  Good thing I have a Computer Science Degree, and 5
years experience as a Unix System Administrator.  I pity the newbies.
I'll never stray from an LTS-to-LTS upgrade again.

Before I get into specific, difficult-to-believe gripes, Mark
Shuttleworth, I beseech you: PLEASE BASE UBUNTU OFF DEBIAN STABLE, NOT
DEBIAN TESTING.  Why?  Because Ubuntu is CUTTING EDGE ENOUGH now, and
has all the basic application functionality well-covered that 98% of all
users will want.  No need to skate the edge anymore.  Quit grinding us.
If you want this to be "Linux for Human beings", then make it stable,
and keep it stable.  Stability should come ahead of being cutting edge.
The cutting edge is inherently NOT for the masses.  That's an axiom you
can take to the bank.

OK, here are some specific, huge upgrading problems, described in
general terms.  I provide them mainly to underscore my general point
above.  No, I don't have the time to open like 15 seperate bug reports
for each of these.

-When the upgrade popup first appeared inviting me to upgrade to 11.10,
when I pressed the "Remind me later" button, it did nothing.  I had to
press the X in the upper right to make the invitation go away.  It makes
we wonder, "Is that installer tool QA'ed whatsoever?  How did they miss
that button being broken, which about 90% of all users will surely click
(who don't want to upgrade that very instant they are first invited)."

-I wanted to use the "alternate" installation CD, to cut down on
bandwidth used.  This is because I'm on satellite internet, where the
bandwidth is metered, and precious.  Once this install was initiated,
the installer asked if I wanted to download newer packages in addition
to installing from CD.  By pressing the "No," button it promised to not
download anything from the internet, and just install from the CD.  When
I pressed "No", the installer DOWNLOADS FROM THE INTERNET ANYWAY.

-To confirm that I wasn't hallucinating, I wanted to open System Monitor
to see if in fact downloading was occuring.  The very instant I launched
it, my DESKTOP SESSION WENT ALL WONKY.  The sidebar along the left
DISAPPEARED.  Only two icons on the desktop remained, with my desktop
background still there.  But they flashed in and out of existence,and
were unresponsive.  The installer also flashed in and out of existence,
and lost all it's window decorations!  The installer froze when it
wanted to make a popup to ask me a question, but that popup wouldn't
show up at all.  (At the time of configuring libpam0g).  I had to kill
the X session and try to continue the install, in a now-broken state
from the command line.

-I discovered the alternate install CD was having I/O errors, even
though it was freshly burnt (good thing I knew to look in the logs),
since THE INSTALLER MADE NO CHECKSUM CHECK BEFORE INSTALLING, NOR
INFORMED ME OF THE I/O ERRORS.  Good thing I knew how to remove the CD
from /etc/apt/sources.list, and "sudo apt-get update".

-After much command-line kung foo (manually installing "unity-greeter,"
"nvidia-current," blacklisting the "nouveau" kernel module (since I have
an NVidia video card), then running "sudo do-release-upgrade", ), I
managed to get the system to boot to a graphical screen.

-But my phpmyadmin, and mysql server still remain broken after the
upgrade.  Since MYSQL-CLIENT WAS NOT INSTALLED, BUT THE UPGRADE PROCESS
ASSUMED IT SHOULD EXIST, now I can't even start mysql-server.

-Also broken: now when I launch the "boot-up manager", many (but not
all) boot-time system services now have descriptions that are just
strings that look like MD5sums, instead of English descriptions.  See
attachment.  And turning on services that look like they should be on
(such as lightdm, plymouth, udev, dmesg, and cron)  just make error
messages on the console at boot time.  These SERVICES ARE SOMEHOW NO
LONGER IN THE DOMAIN OF BOOT UP MANAGER TO CONTROL, but the end user is
not informed of this.  How are these services now to be managed,
graphically, if not with the Boot Up Manager?  Oh yeah, Boot Up Manager
might also freeze if you enable several of these no-longer-controlled-
services, and try to start them.


** Attachment added: "boot-up-manager-after-oneiric.png"
   https://bugs.launchpad.net/null/+bug/876146/+attachment/2561593/+files/boot-up-manager-after-oneiric.png

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/876146

Title:
  Upgrading Ubuntu is risky (unusable or unbootable PC). The Upgrade
  Popup does not warn of the risks or offers fail-safe alternatives.
  This is a mouse trap for unsuspecting users.

Status in NULL Project:
  Invalid
Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Typical bad upgrade user case (forum post):
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1860359

  Unusable upgrade pic (unbootable)
  http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=204320&d=1318627364

  [ubuntu] Thread for failed upgrades (huge list within 24 to 48 hours)
  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1858475

  Lots of angry users with broken computers that need rescue...

  Yes, that's how bad the situation has become.

  The friendly Upgrade popup has become a mouse trap for new and
  unsuspecting users.

  Warnings and fail-safe alternatives and/or advise should be offered.
  Specially for users who cant risk having their computers broken (only
  have 1 OS). Nor have the knowledge, will, time and patience to fix
  something like this.

  I think this should be Critical for "Precise" pangolin as the number
  of users upgrading will be in the Tens if not hundreds of thousands
  (or millions...), since this will be the new LTS.

  ===Initial proposal===:

  See comment #10:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-design/+bug/876146/comments/10

  ===Other related helpers for the upgrade problem===:

  -There is no "feedback and reporting tool to count the number of bad
  upgrades" and their related causes. Users should be able to give
  immediate feedback after every upgrade (successful or not). "Ubuntu-
  bug upgrade-report" on startup after an upgrade and a section on
  launchpad or dedicated site.

  -Update/upgrade manager should offer an auto-backup wizard to safe
  guard important user files to another partition, external storage or
  online (See comment #10).

  -Also separate branches for testing and a better release process/cycle would certainly help diminish the amount of bugs and many upgrade problems as it has been discussed here:
  http://netsplit.com/2011/09/08/new-ubuntu-release-process/

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