Re: Update Debian 9 to 10

[Thanos Katsiolis <kls.thanos@gmail.com>]

Thank you David for your fast response,

Indeed, in order to update I opened the terminal and started the procedure described in Release notes (terminal  was the only running program).

It is the first time I update a Linux system and from your answer I understand that this is done differently.

Ctrl-Alt-F2 moves me to the graphical interface to login, although something like a constant refresh doesn't let me insert the root password.

Pressing Ctrl-Alt-F1, I return to the same message with the black background that I described in my OP.

Ctrl-Alt-F3 opens the tty3 and prompts for login (this must be the "textual VC" you mentioned in your answer).

Which is the best option to proceed and how can I continue? The message does not indicate a problem (at least I didn't recognize it).

Thanks again,

- Thanos.

On Thu, Dec 9, 2021 at 5:37 PM David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote:

On Thu 09 Dec 2021 at 16:39:52 (+0200), Thanos Katsiolis wrote:

> I followed the Release notes
> <https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/amd64/release-notes.en.pdf> for
> Debian 10, in order to update from Debian 9 to Debian 10. After running
>
> apt-get upgrade
>
> I ran
>
> apt full-upgrade
>
> to complete the update to Debian 10. While the command was running on
> terminal, it switched to black background and displayed
>
> /dev/sda5: clean, xxxxxxx/xxxxxx files, xxxxxxx/xxxxxx blocks
> [     xxxxxx] kvm: disabled by bios
> [     xxxxxx] kvm: disabled by bios
> [     xxxxxx] kvm: disabled by bios
> [     xxxxxx] kvm: disabled by bios
> [ OK ] Started Daily apt upgrade and clean activities.
>
> with a blinking underscore, and the upgrade is interrupted. What is this
> about, and how can I proceed?

That sounds as if you might have been in X while upgrading, and
dropped out into a console that was displaying the original startup
messages (which look very much like my own). See §4.1.5.

If you can't find a shell prompt (eg, try Ctrl-Alt-F2 etc for possible
VCs) so you can carry on, it may be necessary to close down as
gracefully as you are able to, and then login as root to a textual VC
to carry on with the upgrade.  APT is pretty clever and picking up
where it left off, though you might benefit from running commands
such as:

  # apt-get -f install
  # dpkg --configure --pending

if things have got somewhat wedged. (See §4.5.3 and the sections
around there.)

Cheers,
David.