12.10 -> 13.10 upgrade with some issues

[Guest]

I initially started with a Ubuntu 12.04 LTS install on my Sony SVS151190X laptop. Unity was not my thing so I did away with it and installed KDE, followed by adding any necessary kubuntu repositories. This got me through 12.10. Now a couple of days ago, a message popped up asking me to upgrade so I went on ahead and continued through the whole process via terminal instead of using muon. Everything seemed to have installed correctly so I restarted and was immediately greeted with a very annoying problem, I couldn't get a graphical desktop! Things go very smoothly through the boot process, I am even able to get to the login screen, but as soon as I login the only thing visible is the mouse and a black screen. I've attempted to boot into different desktop environments via login screen, all netting the same result. Thankfully I can boot into text mode by adding "text" at the end of the /linux line in grub boot options.

I'd like to figure out where the problems stems from, any guidance will be highly appreciated. My initial thought was that this was an issue with the video drivers or x server. I looked at the log for xorg and did not see anything out of the ordinary. I'd post up the whole log but am unsure how I would go about that since I can only boot into text mode at the moment.

Any help would be appreciated!

[SteveRiley]

Although we've had other reports of similar problems, I'm going to suggest that yours is a result of trying to put KDE on top of a Ubuntu install and then trying to remove left-over Ubuntu desktop traces. That's actually somewhat difficult to do properly, and could leave your computer in an unstable state. I would recommend you start over with a fresh Kubuntu 13.04 installation, and allow it to reformat your drive in the process.

[Guest]

Thank you for the response! It seems like I've started to narrow down on the problem, there's some kind of conflict with x server trying to run both lightdm and mdm at the same time. I'll attempt to get uninstall all but one desktop manager in order to see if that fixes anything. At this point I'm certain that the best option would be to start with a fresh install like you suggested though.

[dmeyer]

Although we've had other reports of similar problems, I'm going to suggest that yours is a result of trying to put KDE on top of a Ubuntu install and then trying to remove left-over Ubuntu desktop traces. That's actually somewhat difficult to do properly, and could leave your computer in an unstable state. I would recommend you start over with a fresh Kubuntu 13.04 installation, and allow it to reformat your drive in the process.

This is very very sane advice. OP take heed. Kubuntu is terrible at release upgrades and Ubuntu makes for a terrible start to a good Kubuntu experience.

[SteveRiley]

Kubuntu is terrible at release upgrades

I am curious why you think this?

[dmeyer]

I am curious why you think this?

I have just never had good luck with release upgrades. Things always break everywhere. Package upgrades always go great but moving from e.g. 12.04 -> 12.10 is always a mess. I always end up doing fresh installs but I do back-up package lists etc. which means I don't end up manually reinstalling everything. I do love Kubuntu though.

[SteveRiley]

I have just never had good luck with release upgrades. Things always break everywhere. Package upgrades always go great but moving from e.g. 12.04 -> 12.10 is always a mess. I always end up doing fresh installs but I do back-up package lists etc. which means I don't end up manually reinstalling everything. I do love Kubuntu though.

I wonder what causes such variations in experience. We have folks here who've successfully release-upgraded continuously from 9.04.

[Snowhog]

I wonder what causes such variations in experience. We have folks here who've successfully release-upgraded continuously from 9.04.

I would have to suggest that it's the existence of applications installed from downloaded applications that were not found in the supported repositories. I say that, because during a release-upgrade, non-standard (non-*buntu) repositories are commented before upgrading the release. However, if applications installed from 'outside' of a repository (downloaded tarball) exist, these "could" interfere with or confuse the process with conflicting dependency issues.

[SteveRiley]

Logical. I tend to run pretty vanilla stuff, despite all the experimenting it might seem I do. I don't do much "multimedia" or gaming, which tend to require off-repo software.

[dmeyer]

I wonder what causes such variations in experience. We have folks here who've successfully release-upgraded continuously from 9.04.

I really don't know. Its not just me though. Everybody who I have ever set up Kubuntu for have the issue and I don't think it has anything to do with the way they use the system or I set it up. It might have to do with pretty much everybody using laptops and laptop hardware can be picky. Maybe the new install just detects things better. Who knows? A fresh install just works but oddly I try release upgrades every time. Its also probably not ppa's either, apart from a few "kubuntu" ppas like backports I don't add anything to my system.

[SteveRiley]

This is what I've done, on my collection of ThinkPads:

* T410: install Karmic
* _____: pave and install Lucid
* _____: do-release-upgrade Lucid to Maverick
* T420: install Natty
* _____: do-release-upgrade Natty to Oneiric
* T520: dd the Oneiric install from the T420 (yes, it worked beautifully)
* _____: do-release-upgrade Oneiric to Precise
* _____: experience pain (LP 993187); pave and install Precise; continue pain (again LP 993187)
* _____: pave and install Quantal
* _____: do-release-upgrade Quantal to Raring

Never had a problem with release upgrades, and I always leave Xorg-Edgers, Ubuntu-Audio-Dev, Kubuntu-PPA, and Kubuntu-Backports enabled every time.

[dmeyer]

This is what I've done, on my collection of ThinkPads:

* T410: install Karmic
* _____: pave and install Lucid
* _____: do-release-upgrade Lucid to Maverick
* T420: install Natty
* _____: do-release-upgrade Natty to Oneiric
* T520: dd the Oneiric install from the T420 (yes, it worked beautifully)
* _____: do-release-upgrade Oneiric to Precise
* _____: experience pain (LP 993187); pave and install Precise; continue pain (again LP 993187)
* _____: pave and install Quantal
* _____: do-release-upgrade Quantal to Raring

Never had a problem with release upgrades, and I always leave Xorg-Edgers, Ubuntu-Audio-Dev, Kubuntu-PPA, and Kubuntu-Backports enabled every time.

Lucky you. I'm sure many people have had great experiences but I've just never been one of them. Just for fun, I'm going to spin up a 12.04 install in a vm and see if I can bring it up to 13.04 painlessly. Maybe taking the hardware and any customization out of it might tell me what I've been doing wrong.

[dmeyer]

Anyways, I spun up a fresh install in a vm and did release upgrades from an original 12.04 install to 13.04. It went alright actually. wasn't 100% smooth but it wasn't too bad. Ended up having to use sudo dpkg --configure -a followed by sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade for 12.04 to 12.10 after the upgrade got stuck. For 12.10 to 13.04 I ran into an issue with libc6 and debconf which led me to spinning up the 12.04 iso, chrooting in to the install and installing the debconf and libc6 packages the bad way that I downloaded from packages.ubuntu.com and then finishing off with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade.

Overall it wasn't too bad, but wasn't too good either. Compared to other distros it performed about average. I'd say it would have tripped up most newbies. For any moderate user this would have been fine but for a fairly new user it would have been horrifying. Still, very few Windows upgrades go smoothly so it's not all bad.

In the future I guess I'll be a little less critical.

[SteveRiley]

For 12.10 to 13.04 I ran into an issue with libc6

Raring includes an update to libc6. For the past several releases, libc6 has been at 2.15; now it's at 2.17. This has caused a few problems...for instance, VMware Player now won't compile properly. Normally it self-elevates during compilation; now, it silently fails. You have to sudo to root to get the modules to compile.

[buzzmandt]

Kubuntu is terrible at release upgrade

This is questionable at best. I have never had an issue release upgrading kubuntu on any of the 10+ computers I IT for friends and family.