Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: update-manager
Who knows how many packages this actually involves.
My server runs Jaunty and I'm trying to upgrade to Karmic. It is
connected via a KVM and uses a USB keyboard and mouse. I was switched
away from the machine while the actual installation was happening
(installing/upgrading all those packages takes a very long time). Part
way through the upgrade stopped asking me if I wanted to keep my changes
to /etc/hdparm.conf. However at this part of the upgrade process Ubuntu
cunningly decided not to support USB any more. It was not possible to
do any form of interaction via USB keyboard or mouse via the KVM nor
with spares plugged directly into the computer. In the end I had to
resort to hitting the reset button. (The machine was still working fine
with various clocks etc updating).
On reboot the boot hangs doing NFS exports with no way to fix that. I
tried booting in recovery mode hoping to be able to get a shell to at
least move /etc/exports out the way, but of course I can only do that
with a root password. My system doesn't have a root password as per
normal ubuntu installation. At least let me login as a user who can
then sudo to root!
I finally chose the recovery option to fixup dpkg. It is installing all
sorts of stuff including asking me about /etc/hdparm.conf again, but in
text mode which is way harder to interact with. On another file it
offered me a shell to fixup a merge which didn't work (no error message,
no shell, just the same menu again). And who knows what won't be
cleaned up now since my upgrade is finishing via dpkg recovery directly
and not update-manager.
The lessons and fixes:
- Input via USB, BlueTooth etc *must* *always* work throughout the
upgrade process
- The recovery boot option needs to let me login as a user who can get
to root, not only root. Especially relevant if root has no password (ie
99.99% of Ubuntu systems)
- The whole upgrade process should register itself as part of the boot
process and automatically continue if it did not finish. There are many
other reasons the upgrade process could get screwed during the upgrade
process (eg power failures, panics, disk space, X crashing etc)
** Affects: update-manager (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: New
--
Miserable experience upgrading from Jaunty to Karmic
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/496383
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.
--
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
