Upgrading from 10.04.1 to Maverick 10.10

[Basil Chupin]

On 11/10/2010 22:26, Nils Kassube wrote:
> Basil Chupin wrote:
>    
>> OK, I thought, now let's get the "main" system done but as an upgrade
>> - since Update Manager keeps telling me that there is an upgrade to
>> my up-to-date 10.04.1.
>>
>> So, I press the button.
>>
>> Several minutes later I am informed that-
>>
>> that about 12 packages are no longer supported by Canonical but I may
>> be able to get support from the "community" - or some words to this
>> effect;
>>
>> that there will be some 803MB(!) to be downloaded which will take
>> about 1 1/2 hours to do;
>>
>> that 1240 packages will be upgraded; and
>>      
> For me it was about 1400 packages with a download of about 1.5GB / 40
> minutes (sorry, I didn't write down exact numbers). Obviously I have
> some more packages installed than you, but I think your system also had
> more packages than you get with the CD.
>
>    
>> that all this will take possibly several hours...........
>>
>> ...........Do you want to Upgrade?
>>
>>
>> Well, what do you think?!
>>      
> The warning of several hours is surely a precautionary measure for slow
> machines like mine. I continued and after the download, the first guess
> with real numers was 4 hours. After about 1/4 hour the estimated time
> was down to 1.5 hours which was already quite good - finally it was
> finished two hours after the download.
>
> But the upgrade time really depends a lot on the machine. It was about
> the same time I needed for the last upgrade on this machine (laptop with
> 1,7 GHz Pentium M and rather slow disk). On my main machine I am used to
> an upgrade time of about 30 minutes + download time.
>    

Of course all such things are relative - but in my case the HDs on which 
I installed 10.10 as a clean install are sitting in cradles and 
therefore were used on the *exact same* computer on which I then tried 
to install Maverick as an upgrade - AND on to HDs which have faster 
seek-times and also with 8X the cache size onboard the HDs contaning 
Maverick itself.....but this is of little consideration.

I always try to keep all my installations of Ubuntu the same but have to 
admit that the new installation of 10.10 did not have all the packages 
installed as the ones I have on the "main" system- for example, I did 
not install K3b or K9Copy. Perhaps this may have made a difference? Dunno.

>> I will do a clean install tomorrow. All my most "can't do without"
>> files (eg, Thunderbird, Mozilla, Documents..) are backed up - the
>> rest in /home are all replaceable.
>>
>> So, if you are thinking about upgrading or doing a clean install
>> consider the above.
>>      
> Yep, and also if you do an upgrade, make sure that you have a look at
> the progress from time to time because you may be asked if you want to
> keep individual config files or if they should be replaced. I don't
> think the upgrade continues while it is waiting for your answer.
>    

Thanks for the tip.

But I don't really think that I will be doing an "upgrade". I will 
simply do a clean install.

 From where I sit, it would be a lot quicker. But that's from where I 
sit :-) .

>> I guess the best way of doing it is to start the Update Manager and
>> let it tell you what will happen and how long it will take to do an
>> upgrade (and with, in my case, some 12 packages no longer supported,
>> there will be debris sitting in your upgraded system).
>>      
> The debris is not a real problem iMHO. After the upgrade you will be
> asked if you want to keep the old packages if they are no longer
> available. You might as well find out that those packages are still
> available, just not in the main repository but in the universe repo.
>    

The packages may be removed[1], but what about the config files in, say, 
/home and wherever? I've seen posts which suggest that such files are 
not removed and may cause system hiccups.



[1] The Synaptic Package Manager has 2 options for a package: Mark for 
Removal or Mark for *Complete* Removal. Why is this so?


To summarise the above: Horses for courses, as I wrote :-) . Do your own 
thing - as long as you have some info about what you are about to do :-) .

BC

-- 
Went to a discount massage parlour the other day. Wasn't 'til I paid me money that I found out that it was self-service.