LMDE "LATEST" Still full of breakages

[malligt]

I know I promised to stay away until Labor Day, but I read a post last night from vrlack (?) about a new install he had such an easy time with.

So,

I started with the 2011 32 bit iso.
Switched my sources to LATEST per the zerozero posting instructions.
Installed the new mint update app.
Clicked on MU

and

Got a package failure notification in the midst of the update. 8 broken packages. My mint menu was gone....

I thought Latest was not gonna be full of breakages.

Vralack (apologies for misspellings here) said it was easy.
My experience is totally opposite. My user experience is also less than his.

LMDE Latest still not ready for the big stage in my most humble opinion.

I know that Clem said this was new....and this LATEST area still needs rookie/newbie inputs to make it better.

Guess I'll go back to my original position, and wait for the re-spin....after Labor Day.

[TBABill]

edit: Disregard, missed a line in the OP.

[kaizer]

Hi malligt,
what can of problems do you exactly face now?
Can't you repair the broken package from the terminal or synaptics?
I did a french install of LMDE on the laptop of a friend yesterday and it went perfectly smooth (had to upgrade package from the terminal at some point but that's it).

[LifeInTheGrey]

I've set up three machines on the latest repo, and had no issues. Unfortunately, because of the old nature of the ISO, you need to follow this protocol:

1) install mintupdate-debian from stock repo
2) change repo to latest
3) update & upgrade
4) apt-get -f install
5) update & upgrade

No breakages with this technique, which as I said is simply due to the very old ISO. The repo works just as promised, though.

[zerozero]

malligt,
what surprises me the most is how it still works for the most, even with some twists;

let's see, if one picks the gnome edition, it has 7-8 months, went though 3 major kernel upgrades, gcc, perl(a major upgrade), python, xorg was upgrded several times, and is still possible today to install the old isos, upgrade and have a functional desktop, one just can't do it with MintUpdate (at least not the first big update), it can't handle all the changes required to fully upgrade those isos, it will start fine, it will break in the perl upgrades and if you don't go then to the terminal and do a apt-get -f install to clear the errors and follow with another dist-upgrade, your desktop is broken.

I say it again, with the old isos, yes it's possible, and that only shows how apt is a wonderful tool (let's not forget that when we install the system it has about 1200 pkgs and in the first update we are upgrading more or less 1000 )

[LifeInTheGrey]

malligt,
what surprises me the most is how it still works for the most, even with some twists;

let's see, if one picks the gnome edition, it has 7-8 months, went though 3 major kernel upgrades, gcc, perl(a major upgrade), python, xorg was upgrded several times, and is still possible today to install the old isos, upgrade and have a functional desktop, one just can't do it with MintUpdate (at least not the first big update), it can't handle all the changes required to fully upgrade those isos, it will start fine, it will break in the perl upgrades and if you don't go then to the terminal and do a apt-get -f install to clear the errors and follow with another dist-upgrade, your desktop is broken.

I say it again, with the old isos, yes it's possible, and that only shows how apt is a wonderful tool (let's not forget that when we install the system it has about 1200 pkgs and in the first update we are upgrading more or less 1000 )

BOOM goes the dynamite!

Yeah, the apt-get -f install is necessary to do that massive upgrade, but it has problems going anywhere now with the mintupdate-debian shift. Follow my above steps in the terminal, and once you're fully upgraded you won't need to touch the terminal again, mintUpdate will handle it all.

[malligt]

Thanks to zerozero et al...I'm travelling this week with out my LMDE box, and will try again next week (LMDE-gnome 2011_01)...unless and if Mint releases LMDE Gnome 2011_07, then I'm just gonna move forward to the latest version.
Thanks

[malligt]

UPDATE:

Last night, I was finally able to install LMDE 2011_12 32 bit successfully. Following the posts of Lifeinthegrey and zerozero, and consuming well over over 1 hour of time, I now have a 99% working install of LMDE from the old ISO.

The only thing that is still broken for me even after using this process is the LinuxMint "sounds" that are supposed to "ring" so nicely on start-up.

[zerozero]

i'm very glad you got it installed
yes, takes an extra step atm to get it up and running, but it's worth it

[malligt]

OH, NOT "BORKED" AGAIN!

I'm sorry to report my LMDE 32 bit gnome system totally crashed upon start-up today. It seems I've had the worst luck with LMDE breakages.

Here is today's timeline:

When I turned on my computer today, the black scripts that normally run for about the first 20 seconds indicated that they found bad blocks....and the system would not boot.

Given my level of experience (or lack thereof), I did not understand why this would happen to a 3 week old system, that had worked perfectly previously to this start-up, and had a normal shut-down after its most recent use last Wednesday.

So, back to square one I went...wiped the drive clean with kill-disk, then installed last Dec ISO LMDE 32 bit gnome, changed sources to "LATEST" repo, update & upgrade, apt-get -f install, update & upgrade.

And I'm back running LMDE again!!

FYI...After installation, I did run the gnome disk utility, and it did not find any bad sectors....so I still do not understand what happened.

Will keep my fingers crossed....maybe I should buy a lucky rabbits foot

[tdockery97]

So, back to square one I went...wiped the drive clean with kill-disk, then installed last Dec ISO LMDE 32 bit gnome, changed sources to "LATEST" repo, update & upgrade, apt-get -f install, update & upgrade.

And I'm back running LMDE again!!

And of course this evening the new iso's came out so you wouldn't have had to do 1,000 updates.

[wayne128]

So, back to square one I went...wiped the drive clean with kill-disk, then installed last Dec ISO LMDE 32 bit gnome, changed sources to "LATEST" repo, update & upgrade, apt-get -f install, update & upgrade.

And I'm back running LMDE again!!

FYI...After installation, I did run the gnome disk utility, and it did not find any bad sectors....so I still do not understand what happened.

Will keep my fingers crossed....maybe I should buy a lucky rabbits foot

Well, you certainly have lots of time and energy to start from fresh.
Probably with a super high speed , unlimited internet account ...

When I did that it took me 4 hours plus and some more works!!

So I always clone the 'latest working installation' before attempt to do big thing.
Just in case something break, I will be 10-20 minutes away re-installing from the clone..

Have fun..

[malligt]

@tdockery97

Yes, after I had finished, I noticed the new 201108 ISO's were on the mirrors, but they are "RC" and not "Final", so I'm hesitant to do a full install. What do you think?

@wayne128

I'm using a 22MB internet connection....

[timmythepirate]

I noticed after upgrading to Update Pack 2, my battery's percentage is grossly under or overestimated. It has told me that at 98%, that I have "831 hours and 8 minutes left" and that at 95% I have "1 minute left". I have tried updating to the experimental version of gnome-power-manager, but I am still having this problem. I had to tell my computer to ignore any power warnings, just to get some kind of break from spontaneous hibernation. I'm almost positive the battery is still in good condition. Any solutions?

EDIT: I have installed the new iso from the mirror.

[aybesea]

I was actually able to completely update from the 2010 ISOs to current by:

1) switching repo to "latest"

2) go to Synaptic (not update) and refresh sources

3) filter synaptic on updated packages and add about 50 at a time (including dependencies)

4) repeat #3 until all updated packages were installed from Synaptic

5) reboot

6) go to the new mint update and accept the few other things there

done... and it worked. I tried apt-get upgrade & dist-upgrade, but I already had everything. Pretty painless. This has worked on 4 machines so far. I mostly wanted to see if it could be done completely from a GUI.