Question

1

Recovering from partial upgrade precise to saucy

rated 0 times [ 1] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 371 / 2 Years ago, mon, july 25, 2022, 8:13:40

I'm on Ubuntu 12.04 lts and I had the bad idea to add a saucy repository (saucy main universe) to the /etc/apt/sources.list and to run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. At some point it stopped, because of an error with xserver-common.
Now that I have restarted my computer, I can only see my background image when I log in.

I opened tty1, put the repository line in the sources.list in comment and tried a few commands:

lsb_release -a gives me Release 13.10 and uname -a precise.

sudo apt-get install -f, sudo dpkg --configure -a and sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh -a ran without any problem but it didn't resolve anything.

I also tried sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and sudo do-release-upgradebut there wasn't anything to upgrade or no new release found.

How can I either get back to a stable system with precise or completely upgrade to trusty? Thank you so much.

Requested logs:

/var/log/apt/history.log

/var/log/apt/term.log

Current state of Xorg/Linux packages:

dpkg --list xserver-* linux-*

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beateyra

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4 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago eryeath · Accepted Answer

After trying a lot of different commands to install the missing packages or to force the upgrade, I realized that my system was a mess and too unstable, being in a state between precise and saucy.

So if you have the same problem, I suggest you what I did: don't bother you with this and simply make a clean reinstallation of your system by upgrading to trusty:

Burn the iso of the distribution you want to a CD (I chose Ubuntu 14.04 LTS desktop).

Don't forget to do a backup of your data and of the installed packages with sudo dpkg --get-selections > packages_list in case something goes wrong.

Boot from your LiveCD and choose Upgrade from precise to saucy (t will try to keep all your data, packages, etc.)

After the upgrade, check the list of your previous installed packages and manually install those you want.

In trusty you don't have the 32 bit-libraries and ia32-libs is deprecated, so in case you want to run 32bit-executables, you might find a solution here:
http://www.ubuntuask.com/q/answers-64bit-ubuntu-14-04-running-32bit-binaries-454253.html