[Novalug] Hosed Ubuntu 11.10 upgrade.. (Igor Birman)

James Ewing Cottrell 3rd JECottrell3@Comcast.NET
Sat Oct 29 00:26:23 EDT 2011


  On 10/21/2011 2:20 PM, John Place wrote:
> Personally I always do a fresh install between versions. This serves
> several purposes:
Hear Hear! I once tried an Upgrade. It Broke. I vowed i would Never Do 
an Upgrade Again.

OK, maybe they have fixed most of the Bad Stuff...but then as your 
friend found out...Maybe Not.
> 1) You are "running with the pack" of fresh installs so problems you
> encounter is not due to some artefact of the system you upgraded.
> Chances are less (not zero) that you will run into a Hardware
> chicken->egg gotchas.
Certain Libraries or set can also be a problem.
> 2) Acts as a cleaning event, I tinker a lot so it is kinda serves as a
> level set with each release. I also get to see what the desktop looks
> like on a fresh install...
Yup! Start Fresh...with your Old System available as a Backup. You 
probably won't use half of those extra programs you installed.
> 3) Makes you aware of where your important data is stored and you "test"
> your ability to recover in a timely fashion. The by-product of this is
> better system documention of the tweaks you make so you can reapply on
> the next install.
Yup! The best way ri Recover from a Disaster is to have them often!
> Typically takes me an hour to bring a fresh system back to the way I
> need it.. Not counting the actual time installing and patching.. It (to
> me at least) is a simple repeatable process. If my hard disk dies the
> process is the same, fresh install and recover my data.
>
> I have 4-5 machines I do this with but 2 main ones my home machine and
> my work machine. I typically do my home machine first and make sure
> there are no major changes that will affect the way I work (gnome 3 was
> a bit of a shock to my process) and then I upgrade my work machine.
Two words....Multiple Partitions (or LVMs). Just install into New Ones. 
Multiboot back into the old one if you need to.
> Some (most?) would see this as an extreme amount of work I just like the
> fact that the process is the same when installing a new version (common)
> or recovering from a failure since that will happen at the most
> inconvenient time...
Think of it more like Working with Clay. You need to knead it, run your 
fingers thru it to really master it.
> Just my 2 cents and as always YMMV :-)
That was worth Fiddy Cen'
> Thanks
> John
JIM

P.S. I heard that Debian was Really Good at doing Upgrades, so I simply 
tried switching repos manually from Woody to Sarge (I think) and doing 
whatever upgrades I could without conflicts. I use dselect, and it took 
me about 14 or so iterations to reach a fully upgraded state. I would 
just type '+' on a section, and then back out ("R") of anthing with a 
conflict. Apply that update then try again.

There is also 'apt-get distupgrade' to be a bit more aggressive than 
'apt-get upgrade', which processes newer packages over those listed as 
'obsolete'.

P.P.S. Sometimes you have to remove large sections...such as a Window 
System, then Upgrade, then add the Newer Window System.



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