6 ms·

Funny, I run Ubuntu on my laptop and tried just today to upgrade it (since I'm on 18.04 and have been for a while). But no matter how I try, `do-release-upgrade

Funny, I run Ubuntu on my laptop and tried just today to upgrade it (since I'm on 18.04 and have been for a while). But no matter how I try, `do-release-upgrade` won't do the upgrade, complaining about third party repositories (removed all of them as a result), mismatched python versions, and a load of other issues. When I fix one, another one appears. Tried for 5 hours today and eventually gave up. On the other hand, my desktop machines run Arch and NixOS and I have never had any issues upgrading. Well, actually a few issues with NixOS upgrades, but it's so easy to rollback that I barely spend any time on it, and when I later try to upgrade again, everything just works. I wonder why Ubuntu/Canonical can never get their upgrade game to work properly. I've had similar issues with Ubuntu upgrades since I started using Ubuntu (8.X) and seems it'll never be fixed. Maybe I'll just start using either Arch or NixOS on my laptop too.

mmcdermott 5y ago
Interesting. I ran the upgrade over lunch on my laptop and it finished pretty quickly (and I say this as I've been considering moving to Arch anyway). The only complaint I ran into is that I didn't catch the "new release available" message on the upgrade dialog the first time and had to go check again.
flas9sd 5y ago
have a backup and skip the do-release-upgrade script, edit /etc/apt/sources.list directly for newer repos, outcomment anything 3rdparty (in sources.list.d/ too) and update+upgrade+dist-upgrade your system into the future, did it this way for years.. it's almost a rolling rhino
bombcar 5y ago
Even when a "version jumping" upgrade is allowed, I usually do them in order, unless I'm going from LTS to LTS.
- koolba 5y ago
  Bold is the man that jumps across multiple major versions of any software.
uniqueuid 5y ago
I've upgraded from 18.04 in the past, but via intermediary LTS releases (i.e. 20.04). Going all in one step is not possible IMO. Also note that Ubuntu LTS releases only do upgrades after the first point release of a new version. You won't be upgraded to 21.10 until it hits 21.10.1. [edit] Apparently the holdout until point release .1 only applies to LTS versions: > Upgrades from one LTS to the next LTS release are only available after the first point release. For example, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will only upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS after the 20.04.1 point release. [https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/upgrade-introduction https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/upgrade-introduction]
- alcidesfonseca 5y ago
  I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks. Also, NVidia and Cuda drivers mess the upgrade path as well. And ubuntu is the most supported distro.
  - uniqueuid 5y ago
    Yes, Nvidia is special (in a bad way). They seem especially hell-bent on pushing new versions of CUDA on everyone way before any usable software supports it (i.e. try getting a usable tensorflow or mxnet when your machine auto-upgraded to 11.4.x one day after its release).
    - my123 5y ago
      You can have multiple CUDA versions installed at once, it’s not exclusive.
  - rlpb 5y ago
    > I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks. Actually you can upgrade from old releases. You do need to move from LTS to LTS, rather than jumping. So you can upgrade 14.04 to 16.04, then to 18.04, and then to 20.04. See https://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-software-or-upgrade-from-an-old-unsupported-release https://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-softwar... for details.
deeblering4 5y ago
In my experience it's best to simply not attempt in-place major distro version upgrades and approach them instead as a backup/reimage/restore (or using an alternate/new machine) This has been true for me across all distros, and honestly it's a main reason why I only run linux on servers anymore (easy to create a new VM for upgrades, harder to create a new laptop)
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  If you use btrfs, which Ubuntu defaults to, you can simply take a snapshot of your system before upgrading and roll it back if there's an issue. That said, I use Ubuntu on many machines and VMs, and I haven't had issues with upgrading them at all.
  - Hasnep 5y ago
    I don't think Ubuntu defaults to btrfs.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      I just looked and you're right.
- qorrect 5y ago
  I have been using linux and Ubuntu for years, and not once has a full upgrade gone off without a hitch. I did upgrade to 21.10 , and of course it blew away my display drivers.
- regularfry 5y ago
  In my patchy and incomplete experience this is true for Ubuntu but untrue for Debian. As long as I've followed the upgrade instructions I don't think I've ever had a Debian stable version bump fail. Whereas Ubuntu... yeah, backup and restore, because you're going to do it anyway.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  Hmm, I have a couple of laptops with Ubuntu on them, they aren't my primary personal (or work) machines, but I generally haven't had trouble upgrading them - I did one today, via do-release-upgrade -d and it worked fine (though the FF snap, while maybe ok in theory, meant that it had lost all my tabs / bookmarks / etc., uninstalling and installing via apt got me the deb version which did pull those all in from my profile).
outworlder 5y ago
I'll echo the NixOS experience. Upgrades are not even stressful since you can 'rollback' nearly everything.
rlpb 5y ago
> I wonder why Ubuntu/Canonical can never get their upgrade game to work properly. Ubuntu developer here. Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there, and that it's your existing system that has issues. Under these circumstances, I don't think it's reasonable to expect an upgrade to be able to work smoothly. Scripts that handle upgrade paths necessarily need to make assumptions that what they are upgrading from is what the distribution put there. If you hack it up, then those scripts aren't going to work. Your Arch system, being rolling release based, I assume isn't as hacked up with newer versions of things because you get them straight from your distribution? The equivalent on Ubuntu would be to run the six-monthly releases, which I assume you choose not to do. If you do that and then you hack up your system, then I don't think it's fair to compare to an Arch system where you (presumably) don't do that. If you want to run an Ubuntu LTS system then I suggest that you do your hacking inside containers (whether system containers like lxd, or app containers like Docker). Then you won't need to hack up your system itself, and then upgrades will generally work fine.
- uniqueuid 5y ago
  To be fair, some moving parts outside of canonical's work are necessary yet break often. Prominent example: Nvidia drivers. Oh how often have I wiped a system because the precise combination of driver/CUDA/nvcuvid/nvenc and nvidia-docker broke through some freak update. These are the things that often prevent smooth upgrades.
- outworlder 5y ago
  > Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there Some people would call this 'a system that's actually being used to do something'. Don't blame users unless it's clear they are doing something egregious with the system. Installing a different Python version shouldn't break installers, but here we are. Ubuntu should have taken a page from CoreOS, NixOS and even Arch. CoreOS with their immutable system partitions (and two of them so it can revert to a good one if the current can't boot). NixOS with the immutable packages (and the split between user and system packages). And even Arch with its release model. Sometimes you have to 'hack your system' to add a new apt source to try to get your GPU working with OpenCL, or you have to modify some config file on /etc to get something else working. Or whatever the use-case might be. Should that break upgrades then? Ubuntu really doesn't provide any guidance or utilities to help with this. At least figure out a way to install a known sane system configuration, even if it breaks the user's customization. Having a separate system partition by default would actually help a little. Even Windows allow you to snapshot and rollback changes. Something that Ubuntu users have to – guess what – "hack the system" to get.
prmph 5y ago
And this is why the year of the Linux desktop will forever be in the future. From the cryptic (to a normal user) error messages, the broken repositories, the (often) primitive UI/UX, I really don't see Linux becoming more mainstream popular anytime soon.
pxc 5y ago
For my part, I prefer NixOS, too, and it works just fine on a laptop. However: do-release-upgrade is really conservative about shutting everything down and reversing as much as possible if anything goes wrong. But if you know your way around apt and dpkg and you know how to mount a borked system and chroot it, you don't really need do-release-upgrade. Just manually hack up your apt sources to the next LTS release and use your favorite apt frontend (aptitude is probably best for this) to upgrade and full-upgrade your way through it. Use dpkg with some --force flags if the state of things gets really messed up.

mmcdermott 5y ago

Interesting. I ran the upgrade over lunch on my laptop and it finished pretty quickly (and I say this as I've been considering moving to Arch anyway). The only complaint I ran into is that I didn't catch the "new release available" message on the upgrade dialog the first time and had to go check again.

flas9sd 5y ago

have a backup and skip the do-release-upgrade script, edit /etc/apt/sources.list directly for newer repos, outcomment anything 3rdparty (in sources.list.d/ too) and update+upgrade+dist-upgrade your system into the future, did it this way for years.. it's almost a rolling rhino

bombcar 5y ago

Even when a "version jumping" upgrade is allowed, I usually do them in order, unless I'm going from LTS to LTS.

koolba 5y ago
Bold is the man that jumps across multiple major versions of any software.

uniqueuid 5y ago

I've upgraded from 18.04 in the past, but via intermediary LTS releases (i.e. 20.04). Going all in one step is not possible IMO. Also note that Ubuntu LTS releases only do upgrades after the first point release of a new version. You won't be upgraded to 21.10 until it hits 21.10.1. [edit] Apparently the holdout until point release .1 only applies to LTS versions: > Upgrades from one LTS to the next LTS release are only available after the first point release. For example, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will only upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS after the 20.04.1 point release. [https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/upgrade-introduction https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/upgrade-introduction]

alcidesfonseca 5y ago
I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks. Also, NVidia and Cuda drivers mess the upgrade path as well. And ubuntu is the most supported distro.
- uniqueuid 5y ago
  Yes, Nvidia is special (in a bad way). They seem especially hell-bent on pushing new versions of CUDA on everyone way before any usable software supports it (i.e. try getting a usable tensorflow or mxnet when your machine auto-upgraded to 11.4.x one day after its release).
  - my123 5y ago
    You can have multiple CUDA versions installed at once, it’s not exclusive.
- rlpb 5y ago
  > I’ve learned that ubuntu upgrades only if you update to the next version as soon as it is released. I have a 14.04 server that I cannot upgrade anymore and it sucks. Actually you can upgrade from old releases. You do need to move from LTS to LTS, rather than jumping. So you can upgrade 14.04 to 16.04, then to 18.04, and then to 20.04. See https://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-software-or-upgrade-from-an-old-unsupported-release https://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-softwar... for details.

deeblering4 5y ago

In my experience it's best to simply not attempt in-place major distro version upgrades and approach them instead as a backup/reimage/restore (or using an alternate/new machine) This has been true for me across all distros, and honestly it's a main reason why I only run linux on servers anymore (easy to create a new VM for upgrades, harder to create a new laptop)

heavyset_go 5y ago
If you use btrfs, which Ubuntu defaults to, you can simply take a snapshot of your system before upgrading and roll it back if there's an issue. That said, I use Ubuntu on many machines and VMs, and I haven't had issues with upgrading them at all.
- Hasnep 5y ago
  I don't think Ubuntu defaults to btrfs.
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I just looked and you're right.
qorrect 5y ago
I have been using linux and Ubuntu for years, and not once has a full upgrade gone off without a hitch. I did upgrade to 21.10 , and of course it blew away my display drivers.
regularfry 5y ago
In my patchy and incomplete experience this is true for Ubuntu but untrue for Debian. As long as I've followed the upgrade instructions I don't think I've ever had a Debian stable version bump fail. Whereas Ubuntu... yeah, backup and restore, because you're going to do it anyway.
blacksmith_tb 5y ago
Hmm, I have a couple of laptops with Ubuntu on them, they aren't my primary personal (or work) machines, but I generally haven't had trouble upgrading them - I did one today, via do-release-upgrade -d and it worked fine (though the FF snap, while maybe ok in theory, meant that it had lost all my tabs / bookmarks / etc., uninstalling and installing via apt got me the deb version which did pull those all in from my profile).

outworlder 5y ago

I'll echo the NixOS experience. Upgrades are not even stressful since you can 'rollback' nearly everything.

rlpb 5y ago

> I wonder why Ubuntu/Canonical can never get their upgrade game to work properly. Ubuntu developer here. Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there, and that it's your existing system that has issues. Under these circumstances, I don't think it's reasonable to expect an upgrade to be able to work smoothly. Scripts that handle upgrade paths necessarily need to make assumptions that what they are upgrading from is what the distribution put there. If you hack it up, then those scripts aren't going to work. Your Arch system, being rolling release based, I assume isn't as hacked up with newer versions of things because you get them straight from your distribution? The equivalent on Ubuntu would be to run the six-monthly releases, which I assume you choose not to do. If you do that and then you hack up your system, then I don't think it's fair to compare to an Arch system where you (presumably) don't do that. If you want to run an Ubuntu LTS system then I suggest that you do your hacking inside containers (whether system containers like lxd, or app containers like Docker). Then you won't need to hack up your system itself, and then upgrades will generally work fine.

uniqueuid 5y ago
To be fair, some moving parts outside of canonical's work are necessary yet break often. Prominent example: Nvidia drivers. Oh how often have I wiped a system because the precise combination of driver/CUDA/nvcuvid/nvenc and nvidia-docker broke through some freak update. These are the things that often prevent smooth upgrades.
outworlder 5y ago
> Sounds like you have a really hacked up system there Some people would call this 'a system that's actually being used to do something'. Don't blame users unless it's clear they are doing something egregious with the system. Installing a different Python version shouldn't break installers, but here we are. Ubuntu should have taken a page from CoreOS, NixOS and even Arch. CoreOS with their immutable system partitions (and two of them so it can revert to a good one if the current can't boot). NixOS with the immutable packages (and the split between user and system packages). And even Arch with its release model. Sometimes you have to 'hack your system' to add a new apt source to try to get your GPU working with OpenCL, or you have to modify some config file on /etc to get something else working. Or whatever the use-case might be. Should that break upgrades then? Ubuntu really doesn't provide any guidance or utilities to help with this. At least figure out a way to install a known sane system configuration, even if it breaks the user's customization. Having a separate system partition by default would actually help a little. Even Windows allow you to snapshot and rollback changes. Something that Ubuntu users have to – guess what – "hack the system" to get.

prmph 5y ago

And this is why the year of the Linux desktop will forever be in the future. From the cryptic (to a normal user) error messages, the broken repositories, the (often) primitive UI/UX, I really don't see Linux becoming more mainstream popular anytime soon.

pxc 5y ago

For my part, I prefer NixOS, too, and it works just fine on a laptop. However: do-release-upgrade is really conservative about shutting everything down and reversing as much as possible if anything goes wrong. But if you know your way around apt and dpkg and you know how to mount a borked system and chroot it, you don't really need do-release-upgrade. Just manually hack up your apt sources to the next LTS release and use your favorite apt frontend (aptitude is probably best for this) to upgrade and full-upgrade your way through it. Use dpkg with some --force flags if the state of things gets really messed up.