Ubuntu Server 12.10 to 13.04 Upgrade Failure

Bob Fletcher · 05-07-2013, 08:30 AM

Hello

To give your background my server is tucked away in a cupboard and I really don't have to do anything with it that's the wonderful thing about Ubuntu Linux. When I need to access the server I do this for my Windows box using FTP Telnet etc. The upgrade I attempted was using the Telnet client.

During the upgrade something failed and all I got running down the screen was a 'y' I was open for this to time out but eventually I had to do a CTRL-C I then ran a reboot and this did bring some life back into the system. On first reboot it told me that I had 496 packages to upgrade on second reboot it told me there was too many packages to list that needed upgrading. I take it from this that most of the upgrade to 13.04 was a failure.

If I run apt-get update I get a failure that says "dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem."

When I attempt to run be above I get the following error, "Package it is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should reinstalled it be before attempting configuration."

I get the same error if I run "apt-get upgrade".

The last thing I want to do is to reinstall the OS. Can I do what it says and install dpkg manually as my understanding is that dpkg is needed to install all packages. Also what other options are by got to repair the system either online or using a life disk. As I said earlier the system is running and all servers appear to be running so it would seem to me that 13.04 is only partly installed.

Robert…

dadams982 · 05-08-2013, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bob Fletcher

Hello

To give your background my server is tucked away in a cupboard and I really don't have to do anything with it that's the wonderful thing about Ubuntu Linux. When I need to access the server I do this for my Windows box using FTP Telnet etc. The upgrade I attempted was using the Telnet client.

During the upgrade something failed and all I got running down the screen was a 'y' I was open for this to time out but eventually I had to do a CTRL-C I then ran a reboot and this did bring some life back into the system. On first reboot it told me that I had 496 packages to upgrade on second reboot it told me there was too many packages to list that needed upgrading. I take it from this that most of the upgrade to 13.04 was a failure.

If I run apt-get update I get a failure that says "dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem."

When I attempt to run be above I get the following error, "Package it is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should reinstalled it be before attempting configuration."

I get the same error if I run "apt-get upgrade".

The last thing I want to do is to reinstall the OS. Can I do what it says and install dpkg manually as my understanding is that dpkg is needed to install all packages. Also what other options are by got to repair the system either online or using a life disk. As I said earlier the system is running and all servers appear to be running so it would seem to me that 13.04 is only partly installed.

Robert…

You can force remove the troubling package and reinstall it.

sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq packagename

Bob Fletcher · 05-09-2013, 03:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dadams982

You can force remove the troubling package and reinstall it.

sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq packagename

I'm afraid it turned out to be a little bit more complicated than this. I did do as you suggested and reinstalled dpkg from archive. This did show some considerable improvement however things not fully working. I finally did what I should have done in the first place and that was to do a clean install.

I did a lot of reading about this on the net and it seems to be a far from uncommon problem. I was lucky in that I was able to boot the system. Anyway I have it all up and running again. Thanks very much indeed for getting back to me.

Robert…