[SOLVED] Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

[piete]

Hi! I tried to upgrade from Feisty to Gutsy by the instructions on kubuntu.org. The download was over 1GB so I left it to work over the night (my connection is 1MB but in practice around 500k. When I returned to my computer, there was an error message (unfortunately I don't remember any more which) but I continued hoping that it would not do anything harm. However, the installation froze so I had to kill it. I remember that it had downloaded everything and the error was in the next stage.

I tried to do the upgrade again, but Adept Manager refuses to start, it says that conversation with su failed. [edit begin:] I guess I was trying to run adept_manager from konsole, because I tried to start Adept Manager again, and now it says

"Database Locked - Another process is using the packaging system database (probably some other Adept application or apt-get or aptitude).
Would you like to attempt to resolve this problem? No will enter read-only mode and Cancel to quit and resolve this issue yourself."

but answering yes only crashes the program.
[edit end]

I really need some advice on how to go on. I really hope that there is a way to continue the upgrade but if that is lost I hope that at least I wouldn't have to do a new install since I have installed a few GB's worth of programs and I wouldn't want to go through it again.

Now is your (the community's) chance to prove that linux is a superior system to windows, I am quite inexperienced with linux but am willing to make the change, that is why I installed so many programs, I really hope to get independent of windows.

I don't have any partitions, it is all on the same / partition (by the way, I asked on the newbies forum about folder "/old" since it is not mentioned in the root directory structure, is my Kubuntu making a "mirror" copy of my system or what? I couldn't get a satisfactory answer there, maybe here somebody can tell me where it came from) but according to my logic even if I had to recompile the kernel (not reinstall) shouldn't my program folders remain intact?

I apologize for the unclarity of my message but hope that the community can make something out of it and that I get to continue being a linux user, until the solution I'm afraid I have to return to the memory&resources hog Vista...

Thank you already in advance for your help!

[helterskelter]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

Eighteen months ago I had a similar dilemma

Just started out on Linux,trying to 'use' it on a single partition. I even set up a logical partition so I could have a seperate ./home.

Eventually I came to the conclusion that I was using Linux more than I was XP, so I bit the bullet and trashed XP completely. The only program I missed was my sat.nav. updater.

Go on, you know you want to

eddie

[aged hippy]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

I had problems upgrading via the alternate install disc, and ended up having to re-install after i had a 7.10 desktop cd burnt for me, but don't despair -- someone will pop in shortly with the correct commands to reset apt-get, apt-update, and apt-install, etc. .... i'm too new to dare tell you what to do.

As a taster.... i've found that the system now boots faster than XP ever did, and shuts down in about 15 - 20 seconds - i won't be going back to XP now.



Edited to add: I meant to reply to Post No. 1 .... never mind, i get confused easily.

[lowey23]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

Try doing the following:-

Close all windows that have anything to do with installing packages, open your Konsole, and enter
sudo dpkg --configure -a
then, one at a time
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-setup

This should get you going.

[piete]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

Close all windows that have anything to do with installing packages, open your Konsole, and enter
sudo dpkg --configure -a
then, one at a time
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-setup

Thanks, it seems to go well but is the last line correct because my system doesn't recognise it?

[lowey23]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

No, don't worry about that one. (I cheated and copied someone elses reply to a similar problem).

I'm pleased the rest got you going, though.

[integr8e]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

I had to do the same thing with a system I recently upgraded; I'm new to Linux and have only upgraded two computers once each, mine and somebody else's. I was afraid I was going to have to reinstall, but followed the instructions I've been taught pertaining to fixing broken installations (i.e. pretty much the list above, minus the "sudo apt-setup" command and not in that exact order) and am very relieved to say that it worked. I am very glad Linux (Kubuntu) has multiple methods by which to accomplish the same task, even upgrading to the newest release; had that occurred with Window$ . . . it'd be a different story.

[piete]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

Great! Now I'm a happy Gutsy user. Thanks for everybody for tips and support! Could somebody tell me about the other "problem", the "/old" folder which is not that much of a problem, more like a hard disk space hog.

I cannot find the solution by search engines because they (at least Google) don't recognize the "/". At the moment the folder takes 2.2GB so I would like the know if it is necessary, since the official documentation does not mention about it. I also have the initd.img.old and vmlinuz.old files in the root.

[lowey23]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

What is the size of your hard drive, piete? Does 2G matter that much? Sometimes it is just as well to leave well enough alone.

[piete]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

My linux partition is 30GB, and I have some 13GB free so it does matter a bit.

Nevertheless, I would like to know what it is. If it is something the system has set up for recovery (equivalent to the HP recovery partition of 10GB for Vista) I will gladly keep it. The problem is that I have not found any documentation about it.

Now that I am learning to use linux I would also like to know what my system does, isn't the idea of linux that you are in full control (at least if you want so)? With closed-source Windows you have to be an expert of assembly language in order to know everything your system does, with linux I should be able to at least have an access to the source code of everything, although my C skills are not that good _yet_.

[lowey23]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

From the start, may I say this is not a RTFM reply.

However, have a bit of a read of this

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/index

and this

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=63315

It all applies to Kubuntu as well.

You should find it helpful.

[piete]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

Thanks, Lowey. I found a reference to /old in http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome, but it was about moving /home directory. I cannot check now because I'm at work, but as I remember, my /old directory has all the directories of / (that is, /old/bin, /old/usr, /old/home etc.). And I will read through it all although I'm not completely new to linux, I have been experimenting with various distributions since 2004.

I will look into the "/old" more carefully. Now my other root directories should be way over 2.2GB, so it seems that /old has stopped the copying at some point. But I should not go too much into speculation, I just would like to know if others have it. Do you think this question should have a separate thread, now that the original case is closed? BTW, is there a way to close the thread or change the title to mark the problem solved?

[lowey23]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

I think(?) that you can edit your original post and change the title. I'm not sure, though, but there is a way to do it. One of our experts will explain it to you, I am sure. (Probably not dibl, though, because judging by the way he has aged in his photo I'm not sure he'll be able to remember anything)

[dibl]

Re: Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

I think(?) that you can edit your original post and change the title.

I think you just click "modify" on your original post, and then edit the subject to add a prefix "[SOLVED]"

(Probably not dibl, though, because judging by the way he has aged in his photo I'm not sure he'll be able to remember anything)

I just celebrated one year using Kubuntu Linux -- look what it's done to me!

[piete]

Re: [SOLVED] Upgrade from Feisty failed, help!

Thanks again for prompt help! One more question: which subforum would be best for the topic on "/old"? No-one has still commented if they have it or not.