Feisty to Gutsy: things that I should know by now

/ nsaunders
  1. Never attempt to upgrade an Ubuntu distribution on the day of the new release
  2. If you do, don’t use your primary desktop machine
  3. Complex tasks that can trash a machine should not be performed after midnight

I only have myself to blame but still: I didn’t expect the upgrade manager to simply vanish midway through the procedure, leaving an unusable system. One thing that I have learned is not to panic. Provided /home is on a separate partition, you can always do a clean install from CD and restore your packages pretty quickly.

Not sure why I’m experiencing zen-like calm rather than seething rage – must be Friday.

4 thoughts on “Feisty to Gutsy: things that I should know by now”

  1. Not sure if this would have solved your problem (guess it’s a bit late now :P ), but I’ve always found that using ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’ works better if you go from the previous release to the latest (eg, based on my research I did a Dapper to Feisty upgrade by first upgrading to Edgy, then immediately to Feisty. It was more tedious but seemed to work). I also usually find that I have to do a few cycles of ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’ and ‘apt-get -f install’ until all the dependencies resolve properly. And reinstalling the vendor Nvidia or ATI video drivers after booting a very new kernel seems to be almost a given. I don’t rely on the GUI upgrade manager … it seems just too scary and fragile for a dist-upgrade; it’s usually harder to loose ‘apt’ during this process.

    Hope the upgrade doesn’t eat too much of your weekend !

  2. Yes, I’ve never had a smooth upgrade – and I’ve always used the GUI update manager. Coincidence? I think not. It’s only an interface to apt, with which I’m quite comfortable, after all.

    I just realised that my original post, “Edgy to Gutsy” should have read “Feisty to Gutsy” – I know better than to skip a release!

    My current theory is that archives at the Australian mirrors were not quite ready for action. I’m back on the case right now with a CD – though we appear to have stalled at the “scanning the mirror” stage…

  4. I’ve only had smooth upgrades before (edgy -> feisty, and recently feisty to gusty on my kubuntu laptop). I never use the gui though

    Yes restricted drivers invariable need poking. Good news is, there is the ‘automated’ restricted driver manager now :)

    Good luck

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