14.04 upgrade problems

[Colin Law]

On 29 May 2014 18:08, John R. Sowden <jsowden at americansentry.net> wrote:
> From what I have been seeing on mainly this list, there have been a lot of
> problems upgrading to 14.04.  I have 2 computers that I have upgraded, and I
> am having problems with both.
>
> The first one, at my office, I have had to boot the previous version (13.10)
> on a separate partition in order to use it.  14.04 crashes.  I have written
> about this, but have been unable to fix it.  I plan to install a clean
> version and hopefully pull my data over.  I am unsure about config files,
> other programs that I have installed, etc.

To re-install but keep as much of your data as possible then when
asked about where to install go to the 'Something Else' option (if
that is what it is still called), select the partition you want to
install over, select '/' as the mount point but do *not*, I repeat
*not* select Format for that partition.  Then the install will replace
the system files but leave you user files as they are.  You should, of
course, make sure you have good backups first.  You will still have to
re-install any non-standard apps though.

>
> The other computer just started having problems 2 nights ago.  After I have
> logged in, I get a window saying there is a problem, and I am given 2
> options, report or not, no details button.  Last night I was presented with
> this window about 4 times. Then I get the more familiar window with the
> apology, and I can report or cancel, and I get a details window.
> Unfortunately all I get is a program name, not any details about the error.
> The program was apt-get.  I also got the prior error message while was
> downloading my mail, using TB.
>
> With all of these, I click on report and go forward.  The OS has not
> crashed, so I don't know what is going on.

Are there any errors if, in a terminal, you run
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

>
> It seems that the best solution to these upgrades might be to do a clean
> install.  I have read about people recommending this before.  Is there a web
> site that gives the step by step process to do this while keeping all of the
> data?  I could print it out have execute it every 6 months.

Re-install should very rarely be necessary.  I think the only time
ever that I had to re-install was following a power fail in the middle
of a release upgrade.

Colin