On 14 May 2012 11:01, Toby Corkindale <toby.corkindale@strategicdata.com.au> wrote:
That's odd.. The way the Ubuntu upgrader works is specifically designed to avoid that problem of internet connections timing out halfway through. The upgrader will download every package, before starting to install them.
... except for some non-free packages. e.g. adobe flash downloads its files at install time. I think there is some other package that does something similar for Microsoft fonts. IMHO Ubuntu's upgrade process is somewhat fragile, any errors will abort the entire upgrade, and it isn't possible to have it automatically resume from where it left of. Running out of disk space seems to be the most common problem I have had. Sure, it checks for diskspace before starting, but it seems to require more space then it asks for. Personally, when something goes wrong with an Ubuntu install (as happens far too often), I find these sequence of commands most useful. df -h dpkg --configure --pending apt-get -f install apt-get upgrade apt-get dist-upgrade The first one will display available disk space. No point continuing if you have little or no disk space. The next line, "dpkg --configure --pening", will configure any pending packages. Note that if one fails, any dependant packages will also fail, this produces very verbose output. Need to scroll to the top and see why the first one failed. This line might fail because dependant packages aren't installed yet, in which case the next statement may (or may not) fix that. "apt-get -f install". If the first line worked, the second line should do exactly nothing. Need to keep an eye on "apt-get -f install" - sometimes its resolution to problems is to delete half the installed packages on the system, which is obviously wrong. The last two lines will continue the upgrade. The "upgrade" is optional, but perhaps safest at this point. These just leaves the stop of deleting obsolete packages. I use a combination of aptitude and deborphan for that. If it gets too complicated and you don't feel up to the task, reinstalling from scratch might be the best solution. Fortunately I have never had to do this myself. -- Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au>