A friend of mine, currently using 13.10 asked me a following question: „Could I, now, today, just change saucy into trusty in /etc/apt/sources.list and do update/upgrade with all PPA's active (and also with change saucy>trusty done) and be sure that everything is properly upgraded...?“ Even though I've walked through transition at the beginning of U+1 not a few times, I'm not quite sure how to answer him now... Most of my transitions were in a „proper Debian way“ and near or after toolchain so... Of course, I answered him that PPAs should be turned off during transition (especially xorg-edgers, if that is even necessary in this shortcut case...) but this one is a nice thought-entertainer... Only stumbling block and reason why I write this is „the midst of U+1“ ... What does update-manager at this point in U+1 do more than just this (simple) replacement (saucy>{trusty, devel}) and PPAs-turn-off...?
zika: is he just running 13.10 by itself (what i mean is no other ubuntus)...if so, he probably would get the option on the daily build iso to upgrade (as one of the automatic options)...that is what i used to move from 13.10 to 14.04 development...i just unchecked my ppas before i began (they get removed anyway during the upgrade)...all his data should transfer with the majority of his apps as well (except perhaps for license programs like Chrome and MS Core Fonts)..and all his personal settings should be remembered... You will recall when i once tried to move into testing by changing the source lists i messed up...but using this upgrade method it does everything automatically for you and correctly! The advantage of doing it from the iso (rather the upgrade manager) is it is a lot faster because the files are right on the iso... Upgrade does work best if he hasn't made a lot of heavy modifications to he system...i don't and it's worked well for me everytime i did it...
My opinion? Do not try upgrading from a stable release to a development release by changing the sources lists if the development cycle is more than 6 - 8 weeks old. The download will be very large. This means that the code differences will be very large. This means an increase in risk of something breaking. The risk of breakage increases the further away from the start of the development cycle we get. Simply install a daily image. It is safer. With PPAs active the sources for those PPAs will also be changed to the development repositories which will not actually exist. For example, has the maintainer created a trusty PPA for that application? If not then there will be errors during the upgrade. Does the saucy version of the application run on the trusty code? There have been times when I have had to remove applications and re-install them from PPAs that are purpose built for that version of Ubuntu. Update Manager (apt-get/software centre) also has responsibility for conflict management. We see people in other sections of this forum saying they have an error message that amounts to apt-get refusing to install a package because that will require replacing a newer version of a library with an older version of the library and it is not going to be that stupid. Think also about why we are advised to refuse the offer of a partial upgrade. That offer may make some sense in a stable release but we know it makes no sense with a development version so we ignore it. The one time I tried it I ended up with a broken system. Someone trying what your friend wants to do will surely get a Partial Upgrade offer and it will be a mixture of "this usually happens during the development cycle" and "there is genuine need to fix library mismatches." Regards.
It is a machine. It is more stupid than we are. It will not stop us from doing stupid things. Ubuntu user #33,200. Linux user #530,530
As You could witness from previous pages of these forums, I'm aware of many (if not all, I might've missed one or two while reading, to be honest...) things You do mention in Your answers... I've just asked (i.e. my friend did) if that would be possible... Surely I would not advise that method as even close to best/safe/anything_similar... I'm not even advising it for the first day of U+1 (remember I've wrote: proper Debian way)... This is/was just a kind of rhetorical question... Yes/No... Download should not exceed DL of CD, anyway... Etc... My answer was given already... Even about „partial upgrade“, somewhere here in a neighborhood of this thread of mine... An answer to question of mine at the end of my post would be even more informative... I'll take a look into a code his evening or later and see... I've just asked for a shortut, just in case if anyone have already looked into the code for himself...
Last edited by zika; February 3rd, 2014 at 05:41 PM.
@grahammechanical: i agree with you that changing source lists at this point in time would be taking a big chance...he would be far safer using the upgrade method like i used...i just did it very recently, and it was very smooth...but i still maintain that if one has the auto option to upgrade on the live iso installer as i did, then that IS the best way to do an upgrade...doing it with update manager would be a second choice but i rate the iso installer upgrade way above it...
Originally Posted by craig10x @grahammechanical: i agree with you that changing source lists at this point in time would be taking a big chance...he would be far safer using the upgrade method like i used...i just did it very recently, and it was very smooth...but i still maintain that if one has the auto option to upgrade on the live iso installer as i did, then that IS the best way to do an upgrade...doing it with update manager would be a second choice but i rate the iso installer upgrade way above it... But, I do re-iterate, question was not about the best way of doing anything, just if someone have tried or have insight about what would happened if that scenario (my friend proposed) were entertained... There are many other threads that do deal with choosing best method and similar stuff...
I've upgraded to 14.04 by changing sources.list in first week of 2014. I also made sure that PPA's which don't have support for Trusty would remain at Saucy and in gloobus-preview case Raring. I used Synaptic for installation of the upgrades and everything worked and is still working very well. There is even someone that upgraded from 13.04 with only a minor problem. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2200121
That's the spirit. Thank You...
I used update-manager -d to upgrade a spare laptop to 14.04. It's currently borked with a black screen at boot. Clean install looks likely on the cards if I cant unbork it.
Not a Canonical employee just a volunteer _____ Remove old kernels (Ensure you do the dry run first in step 6 )
Originally Posted by philinux I used update-manager -d to upgrade a spare laptop to 14.04. It's currently borked with a black screen at boot. Clean install looks likely on the cards if I cant unbork it. Black screen on boot or black screen on DM entrance? Did You try just to boot into tty and fix DM from there? Yes, moderator made even me to go off-topic... As I remember there was a thread about this trouble of Yours, so we could continue there... I'm (almost) sure that that install could be saved with some TLC...
Last edited by zika; February 3rd, 2014 at 06:53 PM.
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