Multiple issues since upgrade to 16.04 and 16.10

[Anonymau5]

Hello

I finally upgraded to 16.04 due to a botch updated video driver on 14.04. I then upgraded to 16.10 due to the problems below in hope they would be resolved. I have listed them in order of importance from high to low.

Upon resume my current session is lost, as if I logged out and back in. I see two error messages stating "Could not start KSMserver. Check your installation." This kicks me back to the login screens which I can then log in and start a new session.

Dialog boxes do not go away after interacted with. By this I mean every dialog box that pops up will not disappear after interacted with. They remain on the desktop. If you switch virtual desktops they stay on that virtual desktop. The image attached below shows more of what I'm talking about.

Dual displays often end up overlapped forcing both displays to be improperly set at boot. I have to drag one display off the other and resize both every boot.

Seems the ability to tab windows together is gone.

If I need to separate this into multiple threads I am more than happy to.

Thank you for assistance.

[acheron]

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/XenialXerus/...eNotes/Kubuntu

14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS upgrade

WARNING: LTS to LTS upgrade to Xerus is currently problematic and should not be attempted. Please install a fresh copy of 16.04 instead. To prevent messages about upgrading, change Prompt=lts to Prompt=normal or Prompt=never in the /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades file.

[Anonymau5]

That's not a viable solution.
We should look for a solution instead of giving up and reinstalling. I have a lot of software that I don't want to have to reconfigure due to instability in the distribution.

[oshunluvr]

I'm sorry to deliver the news, but I feel compelled to point out what seems obvious:

1) What wasn't "viable" was doing an upgrade that is known to be problematic. See the words "WARNING" and "should not be attempted" in the above post?
2) I can't understand why "We" need to look for anything because you have " a lot of software that I don't want to have to reconfigure..."
3) It's not the stability of the distribution that's at issue, but rather the ill-advised procedure you have undertaken.

Clearly, what you want you're not going to get. No one has a magic bullet to fix what you have broken. Yes, I get that the warning label wasn't clearly stamped on the ISO you downloaded but holding your breathe until you turn blue isn't going to fix your install. If there was a way to solve your situation, it probably would have been discovered over the last six months that 16.04 has been out.

You can either re-install 14.04 and migrate all the software you've configured back to it or you can bite the bullet and do a clean 16.04 install and roll up your sleeves and get to re-configuring. Of course, you can always restore your backup because you made one before you did something major like an upgrade of a two-year old install, right?

The best you can do at this point is consider this a learning experience - we've all had them and more times than we would care to admit, at least I have anyway.

Not that you're keen on taking advice at the moment, but you might consider the virtues of using an advanced filesystem like btrfs for your next install. Then this problem wouldn't have happened because you can simply take a snapshot of your install prior to upgrading (or any other time you wish) and reverting to the snapshot if the upgrade fails. But hindsight is always 20/20 and everyone hates an armchair quarterback...

[GreyGeek]

Defensive upgrading:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...Let-s-upgrade!

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...-article/page2

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...btrfs-snapshot

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...d-a-new-drive!

And there are others ....

[Anonymau5]

The reason I made the thread was to avoid reinstalling. I've botched my fair share of installs before and always backup before. The reason I upgraded is 14.04 botched a video driver update and no longer had any hardware acceleration.
Yes that was a broken install. I figured, bit the bullet and run the upgrade. It went well other than the issues I have listed, it works well.

16.04 is far from stable, on a different machine (A T420) that had a fresh install, using dual displays is not possible. I gave up on that and went to a single display for that machine as it was a laptop and not a big deal. Lesson learned here is even a fresh install doesn't guarantee functionality.

Back to my original point, if there is a way to rescue this install I would like to pursue that. If we can figure out solutions than others who are upgrading may not have such a difficult time.

[acheron]

Possible avenues to explore (not tested) backing up files to restore if appropriate:

(1) Delete your current plasma/kde config while logged out of plasma and start afresh.

i.e. ~/config/plasma* and a few other items in there probably
~/.kde/*

(2) Create a new default user and switch to that with fresh configs. Data could be copied across from your old home folder once the new user is running as you wish.

(3) A more nuclear option if it looks like there are unresolvable problems, old conflicting or problematic libraries and settings left over etc.

- Load a non Qt based desktop combined with (1) or (2)

- In a package manager remove as much of the KDE/plasma as you can, and perhaps the lower level Qt/kde libraries as well as long as they don't break system stuff.
- Make sure package configs are purged.
- Using the appropriate meta packages, reinstall kde/kubuntu destop
- switch into that.

[Anonymau5]

Thank you for the suggestions. I will try these out and see how it goes.

Should be an interesting experiment to say the least.

I'll let you know the results of these trials.