[ubuntu-uk] Upgrade woes

[Glen Mehn]

Please please please file against update-manager.

Rob: you can try this:
Boot from usb stick or live cd
Mount your filesystems in their correct places, so that your old / is at /mounts/oldroot
Open a terminal
Type 'chroot /mounts/oldroot'
Run 'dpkg --configure -a'
Run 'grub-install' (shouldn't be necessary, but can't hurt)

Exit the chroot
Unmount 
Reboot without the cd

Best of luck!
Glen Mehn
e: glen.mehn at oba.co.uk t: @gmehn skype: glenmehn 

-----Original Message-----
From: ian pettitt <ian.pettitt at bbsrc.ac.uk>
Sender: ubuntu-uk-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:46:30 
To: UK Ubuntu Talk<ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com>
Reply-To: UK Ubuntu Talk <ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com>
Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] Upgrade woes

On 12/10/10 07:13, Barry Titterton wrote:
> I have just tried to upgrade my sickly install of 10.04 to 10.10. The
> install process failed just after half way when it threw up a window
> which appeared to be asking me what I wanted to do with my modified
> version of GRUB2. This window was positioned behind the progress window,
> and I could only see the top quarter of the window, which contained a
> drop down list of options of what to do with my current version of GRUB.
> The bottom three quarters of the window were hidden so I could not
> select any 'Accept' button. I was unable to move either window to one
> side, nor shrink either window. The install stopped at this point and my
> only option was to press the power button. My computer is now dead. I
> shall have to download the ISO and try a fresh install.
>
> Please note that I had added boot options to GRUB in an effort to solve
> my reliability problems in 10.04.
>
> Has anyone else seen this problem? I do not know if this is a bug that
> needs filing, or another symptom of my faulty install of 10.04.
>
> Barry
>
>
Hi

I had exactly the same problem. Whatever I did, I could get not to the 
window behind.

I opened a terminal, killed the updating process. I then ran

sudo dpkg --configure -a

to finishing configuring the package upgrades that hadn't completed. 
This partially completed, but exited reporting errors. These errors were 
being reported as /var/cache/debconf/lock was not released when the 
update manager process was killed. Searching on launchpad I found the 
simplest way to release the lock was to

sudo rm -rf /var/cache/debconf/*

Rerunning

sudo dpkg --configure -a

then completed without error. I was presented with a number of 
configuration screens giving me the option to keep or replace a number 
of configuration files (php, samba, rsnapshot, postfix etc)

Once this was completed I then reran apt-get to update, to ensure that 
everything was updated, which also completed without error.

At this point I was confident to reboot and when I did I was able to 
restart and log into 10.10

I had backed up everything before starting, and also cloned my 10.04 
install on to an external USB drive using Clonezilla so restoring my 
working 10.04 install wouldn't have been too hard. My internet 
connection is quite slow at work and in the past I have had the update 
process trip up on some packages that didn't download, so I was prepared 
for potential problems in the process. However, I have read on this list 
and other places to not restart the machine if there is a problem as it 
maybe possible to rescue a seemly failed upgrade, which in this case 
proved to be correct.

I would like to file a bug on this, but I am unsure of the best place to 
do so. I have searched launchpad and I think I should file it against 
update-manager, but I wonder if this is the correct package? Could 
anyone confirm this, or direct me to the correct one?

Thanks

Ian

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