Anyone else having Ubuntu 8.04 upgrade errors, anyone?

Currently using Ubuntu 7.10 / Xubuntu 7.10; and thought of upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 today using the CD upgrade. It's acting weirdly, because before starting the upgrade when I checked the list of package changes, it showed that it was going to uninstall every package I had on my system which doesn't come by default, and even a few important ones. For example, it wanted to remove JRE, Epiphany, Skype, VLC, Wammu, Konqueror - and astonishingly, even Nautilus and OpenOffice. That's have been quite OK, but in the list of packages to be upgraded / installed, ones like Nautilus and OpenOffice were missing; even showed that it would remove fast-user-switch, AMD PowerNow, Network Manager, GIMP's print utilities, ACPI...quite a lot of stuff.

It's actually quite random. I open up Synaptic Package Manager after adding the CD, to manually upgrade a few packages, and most of them were successful. However, not a single X.org / X Window System package could be upgraded. THEY are causing that problem - of saying that pretty much everything on my system needs to be removed for it to be installed.

I reloaded my repository list, but this issue persists. Yes, I did not apply the upgrades which needed to be downloaded, partly because I'm on a metered bandwidth connection; but mostly because I've never had to do it until this version of Ubuntu. I've upgraded before 7.10 using the alt CD, and never did it squeal for existing updates to be installed before upgrading.

Has anyone else faced this issue?

Suggest you post this as a question or bug in Ubuntu Launchpad.

Anyone else having Ubuntu 8.04 upgrade errors, anyone?

If you had bothered to read or search the ubuntu forums you'd know LOTS of people have had problems "upgrading" from 7.10 to 8.04. The solution seems to be to do a fresh install.

(I am tired of answering this question, so this is the very last time I'll do it)

I guess I'm one of the lucky ones as I successfully upgraded and haven't had any problems at all. Have you had any better luck lately?

I am a relative newcomer to Linux/Ubuntu and feel that the tone of the reply from Senior Member 'tredegar' is characteristic of what gives Linux forums a bad name. It deters newcomers from asking questions and turns some away from Linux altogether. If 'tredegar' is too exasperated to give a civil reply, then perhaps he should refrain, rather than seeking to score more points at others' expense.

Originally Posted by tredegar If you had bothered to read or search the ubuntu forums you'd know LOTS of people have had problems "upgrading" from 7.10 to 8.04. The solution seems to be to do a fresh install.

Personally, I prefer a fresh install over an upgrade. Always have, regardless of which OS I'm using. Whichever way you choose to go, make sure you have a backup in case something does go awry.

Cheers

Originally Posted by tredegar If you had bothered to read or search the ubuntu forums you'd know LOTS of people have had problems "upgrading" from 7.10 to 8.04. The solution seems to be to do a fresh install. (I am tired of answering this question, so this is the very last time I'll do it)

Yes, I'm aware some other people had issues too. I *did* search the forums before posting. I didn't find another case mentioned where the problem was with packages being removed, that's why I posted this one - not particularly as a technical query, but more as a discussion on whether anyone else had faced such a problem (and worked out a solution). It is probable that I missed something, a thread which mentioned my problem, but I didn't find any such other post at that time.

Originally Posted by cmnorton Suggest you post this as a question or bug in Ubuntu Launchpad.

Ok. Will do that.

Originally Posted by dragonslayer48dx Personally, I prefer a fresh install over an upgrade. Always have, regardless of which OS I'm using. Whichever way you choose to go, make sure you have a backup in case something does go awry. Cheers

I'd have gone in for a fresh install too, but then, it's too much of a hassle. Not the install itself, which would be faster than an upgrade, but the later part - when I need to install software which doesn't come packaged with Ubuntu. Keeping a copy of the APT cache and installing from it isn't my idea of a 'good idea', because since the last time I installed it newer versions would have been released. So hunting down all the other different software and installing them is a big headache.

There was a nice solution to this on Freespire - their CNR client's ability to save your favorite software in a 'virtual aisle', and then when you upgrade / want to set up another computer, you can simply choose to install them and the latest version would be installed. The only thing dodgy about this one is that their repositories generally lag behind normal release cycles.

Yes there are an unusual number of 'issues' if you go down the upgrade path from 7.10 to 8.04. Whether or not all are bugs I am not qualified to say However, one major definite bug that has been reported (it's on the Ubuntu/Kubuntu forums because that's where I went first) is the fact that updating via adept (GUI not command line as CLI is reported as being workable) seems to be balked It should ask for the su password (normally yours of course). instead it seems to flash the icon in the tray as if it is trying to load but then disappears without actually doing anything. More annoying still is the fact that it does not give any form of error message. As I say, this has been reported. I haven't personally filed a bug report simply because I can't find where to do so????? I have filed them in the past but now the procedure 'appears' to have changed.

I'd actually be interested to know if a clean install also exhibits this behaviour? At the time of my typing this I hadn't seen any comments that might suggest anything either way on the official forums... a bit too early perhaps?

If anybody is interested and has this same problem I have a way round it. It's a kludge and is not ideal but it does work. I have root log in enabled on my box (I know about the security aspects but I consider a separate root log in to be more secure than su from my own account which is used far more often and therefore has a higher possibility of the password being compromised, however small that may be) so, I logged in as root and ran adept manager from /usr/bin This worked fine for me but I hope the problem is fixed properly.

If there is a better way I'd love to hear of it

Originally Posted by tredegar If you had bothered to read or search the ubuntu forums you'd know LOTS of people have had problems "upgrading" from 7.10 to 8.04. The solution seems to be to do a fresh install.

I made the upgrade and not a fresh install. I ran into a couple of problems that I managed to get resolved by using a search engine. The one problem I had was that the game runescape had a rscache error and would not load. This turned out to be an addon to Firefox. (I forget which one off hand it is early........ ) The other issue I had was that the x on the x to close to the program boxes would not show on any of the programs. I had to change the screen theme to resolve that. Now my runescape game flies along with less problems after the upgrade. My system is running great. I really have to hand it to the Ubuntu folks for making a really great package for the home user. They have done a great job to make the Debian package more user friendly to the average home user which I am. I was running Debian for about 2 years straight and then after I tinkered with it as I always was I crashed Debian and decided to try Ubuntu. Great combination. It is worth making a clean install if you have issues that you can not resolve. Most of the time I have been able to work myself out of problems thanks to the support of the Ubuntu - Linux - Debian community.

Good luck with your install upgrades or new installations. When you get it working and you will you are going to love it!

Originally Posted by dragonslayer48dx Personally, I prefer a fresh install over an upgrade. Always have, regardless of which OS I'm using. Whichever way you choose to go, make sure you have a backup in case something does go awry. Cheers

Even though I did have success with the upgrade, believe me when I say that I did have an installation disk close at hand "just in case"...

I just upgraded yesterday and had no problems at all except that the nm-applet 0.6.6 lost the connection and had to start the network connection again and everything worked great.

When I tried to upgrade, it showed between 4 and 10 hrs for the upgrade with my 2mbps internet connection. So i gave up. Will try fresh install with cd some time in future. I also have another os in virtualbox to take care of.
Bhupendra bhatt

Originally Posted by kevanf1 I'd actually be interested to know if a clean install also exhibits this behaviour?

Actually, no-- at least not for me. Everything went perfect, and I will say, twice. I installed as a dual-boot first, just in case there were issues, but after a week with no problems, I reinstalled, wiping the drive.

Cheers