Strange upgrade dialog

[lz1dsb]

Have you guys come across this. Since a couple of days my update dialog has change a little bit and I do not know why?
It offers me a partial upgrade - but than it starts the distribution upgrade dialog! How can I fix this?

[ThatBum]

Open a terminal and put in, one at a time:
sudo apt-get update
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

It will update the package lists, attempt to fix any broken/half-installed packages, then run an upgrade with smart dependency resolution. Note that apt-get dist-upgrade doesn't actually upgrade your distribution, as noted here.

Put the output here if it hits a snag anywhere.

[coffeecat]

What exactly do you mean by "distribution upgrade dialog"? As ThatBum points out, the apt-get option dist-upgrade doesn't upgrade you to a newer version but does an in-version update with intelligent dependency resolution. However, if you have accidentally upgraded to the current development version somehow, which is Utopic/14.10, dist-upgrade can be problematic while a version is still in development.

We need to be sure which version you are running, just in case you have accidentally upgraded or partially upgraded to 14.10. When you run the commands ThatBum suggests, post the output. Also, post the output of this command:

cat /etc/lsb-release

[lz1dsb]

Here's the output:
@NUC-desktop:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS"

I'll check out the commands which ThatBum pointed out...

[lz1dsb]

Open a terminal and put in, one at a time:
sudo apt-get update
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

It will update the package lists, attempt to fix any broken/half-installed packages, then run an upgrade with smart dependency resolution. Note that apt-get dist-upgrade doesn't actually upgrade your distribution, as noted here.

Put the output here if it hits a snag anywhere.

Thank you ThatBum!
This solved it. Just a quick question on the second command. From the dpkg manual I could see:"Configure a package which has been unpacked but not yet configured. If -a or --pending is given instead of package, all unpacked but unconfigured packages are configured."
So in my understanding this will take any package that was unpacked previously, but for some reason not upgraded correctly, and the last command will actually upgrade the pending packages. Correct?

[ThatBum]

Correct.

The first command is also important. It updates the local package database from the repository servers; it is the actual check for updates. apt-get upgrade downloads and installs said updates based on the comparison of the database to what's installed. If the Internet connection was interrupted during apt-get update some repositories would be updated and some would be outdated, which could be problematic, so make sure it completes successfully.

Also note that apt-get is itself a frontend for dpkg.

Don't forget to mark the thread as solved in thread tools.

[grahammechanical]

To those of us running the development release (Utopic Unicorn - 14.10) that dialog is very familiar. I see that every day when I update. I never accept the offer. I click continue and I get the standard update mechanism. Running a Partial Upgrade when using the development release can cause more problems than it would solve.

Regards.

[lz1dsb]

Thank you