Ubuntu 8.04 LTS upgrade from 7.10 fails

[Felipe Figueiredo]

On Mon 28 Apr 2008 18:33:07 Robert Stockdale IV wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 4:33 PM, Felipe Figueiredo <philsf79 at gmail.com>
>
> wrote:
> > On Sun 27 Apr 2008 17:05:18 Robert Stockdale IV wrote:
> > > I do have ¨Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu¨
> > > however, I don´t see how that should be an issue. If those packages
> > > don´t work after the upgrade then I will be required to reinstall
> > > them. It should not prevent me from using the upgrade tool to
> > > upgrade my system.
> >
> > It's not so simple, as you have already noticed. If the packages you
> > installed didn't create dependency problems, things would go as
> > smooth as you expected, however this looks like it's not the case for
> > you. The upgrade process can only predict results based on what
> > packages it knows, and that's official packages only.
> >
> > You didn't state which packages you installed from 3rd party repos,
> > so it's impossible to tell what the problem is exactly, but I think
> > you should remove them, and reinstall them after the upgrade.
>
> If I could remember which ones were which, then it might not be such a
> problem. I know most of them are Stock Market Charting programs and
> then there are the multimedia installs from medibuntu. There might even
> be one or two programs compiled from source code. Is there a way to
> find this out? Is there a program or script that can be run to locate
> what is not supported?

It tuns out, this is the easiest part. In System> Administration> Synaptic 
you can sort packages in many ways. When you sort by 'Origin' you can see 
from exactly what unnoficial repos the packages came from, or 'Local', if 
they are not linked to any available repo.


> > > It would be nice if there was a warning about this and an
> > > option to proceed or cancel the upgrade.
> >
> > I believe there *is* a warning about unnoficial repos, but I'm sure
> > what it does when you already have installed unofficial packages.

I mean "I'm not sure what it does" above. 


> The only thing it gives is that it has disabled the 3rd party repos
> from the source.list file. This is fine. The problem is that it cannot
> calculate the upgrade.  I feel it should only calculate the supported
> packages and leave everything else as it is, or warn that program x may
> not work after this upgrade.
>
> > It should be
> > a fairly complex situation to deal with, automatically, because you
> > could install an unofficial version of a package provided (say, a
> > backport, or a locally generated package).
>
> My point is that Ubuntu is rock solid. I want to upgrade Ubuntu. If it
> breaks a third party program, so be it. I can reinstall something that
> gets broken or remove it if it won´t  work. It should not stop me from
> upgrading the OS.  Additionally, I should not have to wipe out my
> current set up and reinstall from a CD/DVD from scratch just to upgrade
> to the next release just because I needed some programs that Ubuntu
> dosen´t support.

I understand what you mean, but you are assuming that the third part 
programs are somehow seen by the system as "different". They are not. 
Once the package is installed, it's in the same pool as every other, and 
has basically the same priority as any other in dependecy resolution - 
unless you state otherwise explicitly in apt.conf, or equivalent. This is 
one of the many reasons why people shouldn't install third party 
applications unless they really need it, or they know what they're doing, 
either from unnoficcial repos, or directly.

This is why I recommended you manage these after the upgrade. If you can't 
install them then, you'll be able to deal with this situation with more 
precise information regarding dependecies (versions, packages, etc).

Hope this helps.
FF