Re: unhappy upgrade
On Sunday 03 October 2021 12:11:13 am Patrick Bartek wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Oct 2021 11:57:51 -0400
> "Roy J. Tellason, Sr." <roy@rtellason.com> wrote:
>
> > In recent messaging here I touched on how I'd determined that my
> > workstation was way behind being current. Apparently I needed to go
> > 8->9->10->11. I tried the first of those steps, and things did not
> > go well in a number of ways...
>
> First, back up all your data before starting the dist-upgrade series.
I did back up a bunch of stuff, and it's a good thing I did, or I would have lost a lot...
> Also, read and follow the Release Notes of dist-upgrade for each version.
Where are these to be found?
> Reboot after each version upgrade, then do an apt-get update/upgrade, etc.
Are you suggesting that I go through that for all of the versions, one after another?
> > For some reason, the software decided to remove virtualbox. Which
> > is a real problem, because it's inside a virtual machine that I do
> > all of my mail, so I couldn't get at my mail for a while. In
> > Synaptic Package Manager if I try to install it I get the following
> > error message:
> >
> > "Package virtualbox has no available version, but exists in the
> > database. This typically means that the package was mentioned in a
> > dependency and never uploaded, has been obsoleted or is not
> > available with the contents of sources.list"
> >
> > I got temporarily past this by installing 8 on this laptop I'm
> > currently typimg on. Some things are decidedly less convenient.
>
> Complete the dist-upgrade for all versions, then reinstall VirtualBox.
> Be sure you saved all your VMs before the dist-upgrade(s). They
> may be deleted.
Yes, I did save them and will do so again before I proceed, since I'm modifying this one as I type here...
> I don't use the VB version in the Debian repos, but download and install the .deb directly from their web site. During the
> install the VB repo will be set up.
I did do a download from their site. But it's not clear to me where I need to put it and how to tell the package management software about it.
> > Firefox is majorly different, apparently having gone from 68.9.0 -->
> > 78.14.0esr. It no longer uses the font that I'm telling it to, and
> > for some odd reason won't play any youtube videos any more. Instead
> > I see a message on the screen that says "if video doesn't start
> > momentarily restart your device". Huh?
> >
> > Konqueror is also broken, I get "Could not start proess Unable to
> > create io-slave: klauncher said: Error loading 'kio_file'"...
> >
> > Trying to open a file with Okular gets me a similar message.
>
> Complete the entire dist-upgrade before trying to fix problems. The problems may fix themselves.
For all of the versions, straight through to 11?
> > I don't see any way to back out of these changes, or any obvious
> > place to look for where the problems are. Suggestions welcomed.
>
> I avoid dist-upgrading, if I can because of such problems, and do a
> clean install of the newest version on a free partition keeping the old
> install as fallback in case something goes awry.
I have done similar in the passt, with Slackware. Which isually involves stickinng another hard drive in the machine. I don't have one handy at present, though, and probably won't be getting one in the near-term.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
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