Ubuntu 12.10 upgrade stopped halfway through

Question

While upgrading from 12.04 to 12.10 the upgrade crashed while installing the upgrades. It stopped while "configuring python3-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets" and the terminal says flashplugin-installer: downloading then shows the url for the flash plugin that its downloading.

I think it stopped working because my internet connection is a bit patchy, and it probably failed while downloading the installer, but what can I do to make it get going again?

Solution 1

You can give a try to fix your problem using Recovery Mode if none of the method works for you. If you are using wired connection then no problem, for wireless connection I'm not sure whether it will work or not, because I never tried to enable network in Recovery Mode when using wireless connection. Although you can give it a try.

• When your system starts chose Recovery Mode (2nd option in grub menu).
• From the Menu just go to Grub option, it will give a message like Updating grub will mount your system in read/write mode. Just chose yes to mount your system in read/write mode. It will update your grub and will exit from Grub menu.
• chose network option it may enable your network.
• Then chose dpkg menu from the list, chose yes for all.

• Finally chose root option and login. Execute following commands one after another:

  # apt-get autoremove
  # apt-get autoclean
  # apt-get update
  # apt-get -f install
  # apt-get dist-upgrade
  # apt-get upgrade
  

  Then reboot your system and check whether your issues are fixed or not. Run this command to reboot:

  # reboot
  

Reply if something goes wrong.s

Solution 2

In my experience, it's better to do a completely fresh install, because even the 'leading' Linux-based system will break at dist-upgrade.

Also, in my experience, at the 'sudo apt-get upgrade' stage, flashplugin-installer ALWAYS fails to download the .tar.gz from the Canonical archive, and nothing has ever been done to resolve this issue, in the several years that I've been using Ubuntu.

Furthermore, 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' has no effect.

Start all over again, and hope that the downloads don't fail, just for once.

Is anyone at Canonical listening?

Solution 3

If the update is still running I would stop the internet connection for some seconds. That should result in an error in configuring the flashplugin-installer package, but it should continue with the others.

Then you'll just have to run sudo dpkg --configure -a after the update (with working internet connection) and the flash plugin will be updated.

Comments

[Mike]

How do I fix the broken packages for the upgrade? And how do I stop the upgrade that's running now?

[polarkatenuchie]

If you are sure that upgrade 100% stucked and nothing happens then you can close it and follow commands.But be aware upgrade can take hours depending on amount of files and settings you have.If its stucked for sure then use this to fix broken packages try: sudo apt-get update -f && sudo apt-get -f install . Or via synaptic manager- fix broken packages -in menu.Also you can use restore option in grub( press shift to appear at startup screen)there are option to fix it to continue upgrade you ll have to enable networking too so itll finish upgrade.

[Jon Story]

This does seem like an excessive amount of work to upgrade... one of the bigger advantage of Linux of previous years was that upgrading was fairly easy: now it seems that Windows/OSX are going forward while Linux goes backward