Upgrade from 8.04 to 10.04 LTS (BORKED)

[Tom H]

On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 4:42 PM, <clintin at linuxmail.org> wrote:
>
> I started this process about 4 hours ago and it is currently "hung" on
> "Configuring dbus", the last message is the "system user 'messagebus'
> already exists. Exiting." With about 19 minutes remaining. Checking top,
> init and evolution-data seems to be "railing" the processor with the upgrade
> process being in this state now for over 20 minutes.
>
> Any ideas on how to complete the process without ending up with a crashed
> system? Control-C is responsive in the upgrade window but it warns about
> ending up with a crashed system as well.
>
> In the past I have done a Ubuntu istribution upgrade in the past, notably
> 6.06 LTS to 8.04 LTS and it worked flawlessly. 8.04 LTS to 10.04 is
> conspicuously totally borked. Every problem I had in attempting this upgrade
> and checked against Google, someone else had experienced, there are bug
> reports filed and more than a few, people had attempted to fix on their own.
> I wouldn't even want to guess how many hours people have spent trying to fix
> a failed 8.04 to 10.04 upgrade. And I followed the process at
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LucidUpgrades Network upgrade for Ubuntu
> Desktops (Recommended) and then following the 8.04 10.04. I have spent no
> less than over 6 hours on this effort. I would not recommend that anyone
> attempt this at home. I think dbus is the primary culprit in the process
> but a lot of operations failed which I had to control-c to get beyond but in
> the end, I tried a number of fixes but they all failed in about the same
> sequence of events, starting with dbus. Between the OpenOffice 3.2 that I
> have registered the bug on and this issue, I have serious concerns about
> 10.04 and recommending it to others, at least as an upgrade path.
> Incidentally, I do run on my main laptop which has hung on boot more than a
> couple times in a text screen where I have learned to just reboot and all is
> well until the next time. 10.04 LTS was suppose to just work, after all it
> is a Long Term Release, more stable that than the interim releases.
>
> As I wrote before, this is not a troll but just relaying my experience, be
> advised of the potential pitfalls in the Ubuntu Upgrade from 8.04 LTS to
> 10.04 and make sure you have a back up before attempting. Fortunately, I
> had taken an image before starting and restored it so this computer is back
> to 8.04 LTS and I didn't loose anything.

I'm sorry that your upgrade failed. Who knows whether there is, for
every case like yours, 1 successful upgrade, 10, 100, 1000? Having
said that, I have always been dubious of Ubuntu's LTS to LTS upgrade
claim/process because of the vast differences between two LTS
versions. Look at the changes between 8.04 qnd 10.04; there's a huge
jump in various fundamental elements of the OS and all these changes
are supposed to be applied while booted into GNOME/KDE/LXDE/... for
desktops and in multiuser mode for servers. There's no way that I
would run this upgrade without being in runlevel 1, with as few
daemons running as possible. I'd also choose to do successive upgrades
to the intervening releases - even if is much longer process - rather
than to do a four-release jump. (It might even be faster to do a clean
install...)