[solved] BEWARE the new upgrade

[doctordruidphd]

I did the upgrade today, got everything setup and working.
A new set of updates came down the pipe this evening. I installed them -- BIG MISTAKE!
First, I lost all of my kde settings, and then it crashed the whole bloody system.
I now have to restore from backup.
I noticed a package called "kubuntu defaults", or something like that, which I suspect is what killed all of my settings.
Anyhow, forewarned is forearmed.

[Snowhog]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

For you, is this on Karmic, or Lucid?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

This is karmic.

[verndog]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

I did the upgrade today, got everything setup and working.
A new set of updates came down the pipe this evening. I installed them -- BIG MISTAKE!
First, I lost all of my kde settings, and then it crashed the whole bloody system.
I now have to restore from backup.
I noticed a package called "kubuntu defaults", or something like that, which I suspect is what killed all of my settings.
Anyhow, forewarned is forearmed.

Someone today did an upgrade from Hardy to Lucid apparently by mistake. It didn't go well and he now wants to back down to Hardy again. A slippery slope at best.

The worse thing is he had no backup! You can it lease take comfort in that you were smart enough to have made a backup.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

Yeah, I'm still a little shell-shocked, as it seemed to be working so well.
After installing the latest upgrade, I lost my panels, that blue bubble-bath wallpaper came up, and then bang!, plasma-workspace crash. I hope I can figure out what did that, as it was really cool for a couple of hours there...

I learned a while ago to make a full backup every time a big upgrade comes along. And save /var/cache/apt/archives so I don't have to download it all again.

BTW, lucid is completely dead here. The install cd's won't run, and the upgrade refuses to boot.
I read something about some sort of upgrade freeze either this or next week, so I'll try it again then.

Edit: I almost forgot. After doing this, when booting the older system, I had to fsck every disk on the system, so I suspect it's re-installing the time-zone problem, too. I think putting a hold on the kubuntu-defaults package may be a good idea before running this thing, as it seems to be rewriting a lot of configuration files.

[GreyGeek]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

I did the update on this Karmic system today, too. It went well.

I noticed a couple problems, however. Kwrite locked up after I opened a 700Kb text file and did a few searches. I used the kill switch and now every time I open the text file Kwrite locks up if I try to put any characters in the search text box.

Also, one cannot change the theme in systemsettings because the "apply" button is never ungreyed, even when running it with sudo. I discovered that when I tried to change the theme from Air to Oxygen because my Oxygen panel is half back and half grey.

So far, other than those items, the KDE 4.4 upgrade is working well!

[Snowhog]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

Also, one cannot change the theme in systemsettings because the "apply" button is never ungreyed, even when running it with sudo.

Not so here.

[Snowhog]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

I noticed a package called "kubuntu defaults", or something like that, which I suspect is what killed all of my settings.

The package is kubuntu-default-settings

Description: Default settings and artwork for the Kubuntu desktop
This package contains the default settings used by Kubuntu. It also
includes artwork and Kubuntu branding.

Wow! Why in the world would this package have been included? If I understand correctly, this would in fact undo any customization one had done before. :P

[vinnywright]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

I had a similer expereance the evening of the 11 of feb the round of updates nearley kiled me ......LOL

as referd to hear

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...pic=3109961.15

basicley a lot of sudo dpkg --configure -a and sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgradeing ........abought 3-4 times .........but now thing's seam ok so far

on a side note the equalizer is back in amarok and it seams to be doing better with cd's not perfect but better..........the device notifier however will onley register a musick cd 1 time then it's a blank notification untill I logout then back in.

allthough nice new visuals for it and the add widgets thing

O and the original upgrade to KDE4.4.0 HAD found the frunt output's for my audio...... but these updates broke that and thay no longer are in chanels in kmix eather.
but the rears still work as allways

VINNY

[kubicle]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

Description: Default settings and artwork for the Kubuntu desktop
This package contains the default settings used by Kubuntu. It also
includes artwork and Kubuntu branding.

Wow! Why in the world would this package have been included? If I understand correctly, this would in fact undo any customization one had done before. :P

It shouldn't, the settings in kubuntu-default-settings take precedence over system-wide settings (but not overwrite them, the kubuntu defaults are installed in their own "kubuntu-default-settings" directories). User configs, when set, should still be used over the "kubuntu defaults".

Also, one cannot change the theme in systemsettings because the "apply" button is never ungreyed, even when running it with sudo. I discovered that when I tried to change the theme from Air to Oxygen because my Oxygen panel is half back and half grey.

Are you using the right config module systemsettings>appearance>style>workspace (not systemsettings>advanced>desktopthemedetails, which is used to customize individual themes)

[ubuntuku]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

user management still fails .. please just move this caikaku things back to beta ppa!

[Rog131]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

Rule of thumb

avoid point-zero (x.0) releases like the plague (for serious use, testing is another thing of course).

Quote is from the "Kubicle" > Re: KDE 4.0 - When a time schedule trumps a quality standard


KDE

- Is a time based release /1/.
- It's idea is to release often with repeated cycles of improvement /2/.
- There will be KDE SC 4.4.1, 4.4.2, ....4.4.X.


PPA repositories

- are a testing ground for the new/experimental packages; grab the source/pack it/wait the screams.


Official Ubuntu repositories (after the release day)

- are the place where you could find the "stable", tested packages.



/1/ > Upcoming KDE 4.4 vs. Bug #162485
/2/ > Possible 4.3.0 blocker in the Konsole KPart?

[lmilano]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

The one thing I noticed, now consistently, all over the KDE 4 series, is that, besides the obvious awesomeness of the new technologies it introduces, there has been a consistent lack of stability.

What I mean by that is that it is too little too common for people to log in to a dead plasma, and they need to basically rename the .kde directory or at least remove all plasma* config files. It has happened to me so very many times since KDE 4.0 up until now. In other situations, a (non-KDE) XServer crash lets you (at least me) with bigger problems, such as loosing the configuration for KMail (and my set up is very time consuming to reproduce). Luckily, I have a nightly backup so I usually recover by copying back the .kde from the backup. But this is a killer for a newbie. They would probably be much better off with a stable (even though not as flashy) Gnome for now, I have to admit.

This is not meant as bashing for the wonderful KDE community, as much as a comment and a hope we'll be able to focus on some minimum requirements for robustness of the software. Parsing of config files needs to be a lot more robust than it is today.

Cheers!

[GreyGeek]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

Also, one cannot change the theme in systemsettings because the "apply" button is never ungreyed, even when running it with sudo. I discovered that when I tried to change the theme from Air to Oxygen because my Oxygen panel is half back and half grey.

Are you using the right config module systemsettings>appearance>style>workspace (not systemsettings>advanced>desktopthemedetails, which is used to customize individual themes)

Mia Culpa!

I retract my statement that it is not possible to change themes.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: BEWARE the new upgrade

Problem solved.

I restored from backup, and ran the upgrade again today (Friday), after placing a hold on the kubuntu-default-settings package. A few bumps in the road, one of them being that it didn't update the kubntu-desktop package, and therefore (?) kdeworkspace didn't get installed. Hence, the bank screen. So after installing everything (which I always do from one of the tty consoles, with kdm stopped), I reinstalled the kbuntu-desktop package, and the virtuoso-nepomuk and virtuosoconverter packages. The I restarted service kdm, and about the only thing that got changed during the update is the login screen. Everything else was as before.

Next I took the plunge and released the hold on kubuntu-default-settings. It wasn't as bad as yesterday, though I did lose my wallpaper (easy to fix), and it did install another panel over the top of my old one. You have to look carefully to find it's cashew, but then it's easy to remove it, and everything SEEMS to be working right at this point.

So the moral of this story is: at this point, upgrading is going better than it did yesterday. And block the kubntu-default-settings package; whether supposed to or not, it does overwrite several configuration options.

Oh,. and interestingly enough, the openoffice.org-kde package seems to be fixed.