Upgrade Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 failed

bobmcreynold · 09-05-2018, 01:14 PM

I hate Windows and purchased a new computer and installed Ubuntu 16.04. It worked great after a bunch of setup problems. I tried upgrading to 18.04, but the pc hung after about 30 minutes into the installation. Mouse and keyboard wouldn't work, but screen command remained on. I finally gave up and powered down the pc. On boot, the pc now display a few commands that mean nothing to me and then black screens and hangs.

How can I recover back to 16.04? My data is backed up on a thumb drive, but none of the OS or installed apps.

Thanks,
Bob

hemlocktree · 09-05-2018, 01:30 PM

i have seen many people have issues with upgrading. Many people also say and believe that a clean install is most needed for beneficial results.

hydrurga · 09-05-2018, 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobmcreynold

I hate Windows and purchased a new computer and installed Ubuntu 16.04. It worked great after a bunch of setup problems. I tried upgrading to 18.04, but the pc hung after about 30 minutes into the installation. Mouse and keyboard wouldn't work, but screen command remained on. I finally gave up and powered down the pc. On boot, the pc now display a few commands that mean nothing to me and then black screens and hangs.

How can I recover back to 16.04? My data is backed up on a thumb drive, but none of the OS or installed apps.

Thanks,
Bob

Hi Bob. If you didn't make a system snapshot/image/backup before upgrading then it is very unlikely that you will be able to recover back to 16.04. You should carry out a fresh install of 16.04 or 18.04.

bobmcreynold · 09-05-2018, 01:46 PM

I can boot into the Grub (I guess) where I can select older OS, but none seem to work. Is there something in one of the system setup menus I can try?

bobmcreynold · 09-05-2018, 03:43 PM

Yes, Mad as hell at the hackers that put together the software to upgrade from 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS. My computer is completely dead other than booting into the BIOS. Checking my backup On Windows 10, shows about 6 weeks worth of data is lost. Probably another 4-7 days of wasted time to get 16.04 back installed. It is no wonder that Microsoft and Apple are so successful as they have QUALITY ASSURANCE!

Probably lots of other stupid people like me that trusted the upgrade would work based on Ubuntu 16.04 working so well.

Changed my mind about hating Windows 10. It sucks, but at least doesn't kill your computer.

hemlocktree · 09-05-2018, 04:09 PM

checking ubuntu forums - would have given you a heads up prior to upgrading. also making a backup when installing or upgrading is standard protocol. i hate redoing systems esp. 3 or 4 of them. i am glad that my bodhi is good for just under 5 years before another install/upgrade is needed. I have run linux since before ubuntu came out. not very successfully due to my lack of knowledge and also some of the strange hardware i expected it to work with. but i have run linux most of the time about 75%-80% of the time once i got it going. I went 100% linux and no extra mac os to go back to for the last maybe 4 years or so? i use it 100% of the time for everything. run 2 of mine and 1 for my wife. I love it though i still know notta about linux. be patient- try a new install and proceed slowly and diligently. Good Luck!

hydrurga · 09-05-2018, 04:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobmcreynold

Yes, Mad as hell at the hackers that put together the software to upgrade from 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS. My computer is completely dead other than booting into the BIOS. Checking my backup On Windows 10, shows about 6 weeks worth of data is lost. Probably another 4-7 days of wasted time to get 16.04 back installed. It is no wonder that Microsoft and Apple are so successful as they have QUALITY ASSURANCE!

Probably lots of other stupid people like me that trusted the upgrade would work based on Ubuntu 16.04 working so well.

Changed my mind about hating Windows 10. It sucks, but at least doesn't kill your computer.

You should always make a system backup/image/snapshot before attempting a major upgrade. The upgrade is not guaranteed to go smoothly for all (the same goes for major Windows upgrades).

AwesomeMachine · 09-05-2018, 10:10 PM

It's always tempting to point blame when we screw up. Linux doesn't kill computers. People do.

rokytnji · 09-06-2018, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobmcreynold

Yes, Mad as hell at the hackers that put together the software to upgrade from 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS. My computer is completely dead other than booting into the BIOS. Checking my backup On Windows 10, shows about 6 weeks worth of data is lost. Probably another 4-7 days of wasted time to get 16.04 back installed. It is no wonder that Microsoft and Apple are so successful as they have QUALITY ASSURANCE!

Probably lots of other stupid people like me that trusted the upgrade would work based on Ubuntu 16.04 working so well.

Changed my mind about hating Windows 10. It sucks, but at least doesn't kill your computer.

I'd man up and accept my shortcomings for what they are instead of blaming outside sources.
I have broad shoulders and thick skin and many shortcomings. Not being the sharpest pencil in the cup when it comes to computers.

Most users know to backup before online upgrading to a external drive. Windows, Mac, BSD, Linux, Solaris. Just gonna throw this link out here.

https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-upgra...-bionic-beaver

Best I can offer to recover files. Because you borked your install, trusting your isp to keep you hooked up without any drops while upgrading. I md5sum my isos because of this fact. A definite upgrade kill situation, when it comes to online upgrades regardless of operating system is losing your internet connection for what ever reason. You could always email Shuttleworth and ask for your Ubuntu money back you paid for your iso.

Or keep paying windows or mac.

Link

I'd invest in a 1TB small drive like so

link

and then after my Ubuntu install

http://tipsonubuntu.com/2016/07/30/c...-ubuntu-16-04/

Should be the same in 18.04 I would think < just a guess > Lets check

http://tipsonubuntu.com/2018/03/17/c...-ubuntu-18-04/

For good measure

Upgrade Ubuntu

jefro · 09-07-2018, 03:02 PM

If you have your data saved then I'd do clean install of either 16 or 18.

Upgrades in any OS has been a sore spot. Clean installs are much more reliable.

rloeb · 09-30-2018, 01:39 PM

Like many others, I was prompted to upgrade to 18.04 from 16.04. Yes, I have a backup! After the upgrade 18.04 will not boot. I strongly object to being prompted to upgrade when there are KNOWN problems, as documented in numerous forums. This is unprofessional and damaging to the entire community. I am now faced with spending the rest of the day attempting to recover this machine and get back into operation. This, however, will be my last foray with Ubuntu. Moving to RedHat, where I can count on professional support and adequate testing.

What would have been useful are some suggestions as to how to recover from this disaster, rather than sermons about backing up. Yes, we all know to backup regularly and, if we have the capability, to clone the disk. But...when you get a prompt to upgrade, you tend to believe that the upgrade has been thoroughly tested and solidly reliable. There's no reason to suspect that it's a hack, because it should not be!

Rog

bobmcreynold · 10-01-2018, 08:58 AM

Rioeb,

I too am DONE with Linux after the failed upgrade. I spent hours trying to get the problem connecting to my TV fixed. Couldn't even get it to work with 16.04, as it was working perfectly before trying the upgrade. Answering 'Yes' to the software updater was my big mistake, thinking everything would work. Backup problem wasn't as big a problem as expected.

I purchased a very cheap PC with Windows 10 to try Linux. Was very happy after hours of getting everything to work properly. Linux actually ran much faster than my high end Windows 10 PC. After the failed upgrade, I loaded Windows 10 back on the PC, which WORKED FINE with my TV, but was so slow I just tossed the PC in the trash.

I worked as a low level computer programmer writing device driver, communication, embedded, and script software for over 10 years on UNIX back in the late 80s and early 90s. I've been retired for a long time and was thinking about getting back into programming on Linux. Big waste of time dealing with Linux, so I'll stick with fishing and sailing.

Bob

hydrurga · 10-01-2018, 09:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rloeb

Like many others, I was prompted to upgrade to 18.04 from 16.04. Yes, I have a backup! After the upgrade 18.04 will not boot. I strongly object to being prompted to upgrade when there are KNOWN problems, as documented in numerous forums. This is unprofessional and damaging to the entire community. I am now faced with spending the rest of the day attempting to recover this machine and get back into operation. This, however, will be my last foray with Ubuntu. Moving to RedHat, where I can count on professional support and adequate testing.

What would have been useful are some suggestions as to how to recover from this disaster, rather than sermons about backing up. Yes, we all know to backup regularly and, if we have the capability, to clone the disk. But...when you get a prompt to upgrade, you tend to believe that the upgrade has been thoroughly tested and solidly reliable. There's no reason to suspect that it's a hack, because it should not be!

Rog

"Sermons": a word which, if you don't me saying, succinctly demonstrates your attitude towards making backups, in particular system images/backups/snapshots before major version system upgrades. There will never be zero problems affecting everyone who carries out a particular major upgrade and that goes the same for RedHat, Ubuntu or Windows.

Enjoy RedHat.

teckk · 10-01-2018, 09:30 AM

Quote:

Big waste of time dealing with Linux, so I'll stick with fishing and sailing.

You lacking knowledge on Linux doesn't mean there is anything wrong with Linux, it means that you lack knowledge. I have an arch machine that I installed arch on in 2011 I think. Have updated it at least 30 times. It still runs fine. That's not a brag, does show that Linux works fine, but you'll have to lean a bit about it. You may also want to look at the rolling release idea.

Quote:

Moving to RedHat, where I can count on professional support and adequate testing.

Yup, and you'll pay for it. Or you can use Centos. Try Debian or FreeBSD if you want older software that is well tested. There are advantages to both, latest software with newer features, and older but real stable software.

Bumping up 2 versions like that can cause problems. Wasn't there a version 17?

Quote:

After the failed upgrade, I loaded Windows 10 back on the PC,

More power to you. I don't think that you could beat me and get me to try and use that as my daily driver.

Can I ask a question? How could I write a cheesy little script on that windows machine to query a search engine for info and spit out the results and be done with it, and save the results to text file. I can can do it in 3 minutes with bash and friends.

Code:

#! /usr/bin/env bash

#Simple search bbs.archlinux.org from google with curl or wget

#User agent
agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:60.0)\
 Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0"

#Search url
url="https://www.google.com/search?q=site:bbs.archlinux.org"

#Get search word/words for search
#Ex: firefox, xterm+font, firefox+wont+open
read -p "Enter search word for bbs.archlinux: " search_word

#Search with curl, get first 50 results, parse with grep
curl_() {
    curl -sLA "$agent" \
    ""$url"+"$search_word"&amp;gws_rd=ssl&num=50" | \
    grep -oP 'class="r"><a href="\K[^"]+'\|'event\)">\K[^<]+'
}

#Search with wget, get first 50 results, parse with grep
wget_() {
    wget -qU "$agent" \
    ""$url"+"$search_word"&amp;gws_rd=ssl&num=50" -O - |\
    grep -oP 'class="r"><a href="\K[^"]+'\|'event\)">\K[^<]+'
}

#Choose one, keep a log
curl_ | tee -a arch_search.txt
#wget_ | tee -a arch_search.txt

Yes Linux, bash, open source software, does indeed work, well.

hydrurga · 10-01-2018, 09:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by teckk

Bumping up 2 versions like that can cause problems. Wasn't there a version 17?

For info, Ubuntu 18.04 was the next LTS version after 16.04 - that is the natural upgrade path for those using LTS.

There were interim releases - 16.10, 17.04 and 17.10 - but they were all short-term releases.