Upgrade from 8.04 to 10.04 LTS (BORKED)

[Liam Proven]

On 13 September 2010 03:01, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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...)

I have to agree. I did a server upgrade from 6.06 to 8.04 once and
that worked fine - but it was a simple fileserver with no GUI. Fairly
minimal config.

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
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