UP6 => UP8: what's the best way to move on?

[ChipHobart]

Hi there,

I'm currently on LMDE UP6 using Cinnamon and avoided to upgrade to UP7 because of the issues reported earlier here regarding the mounting of USB devices. From reading the current topics related to issues with UP8 I learned that this is still not fixed ootb, but obviously some folks were able to get it fixed (http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 8&t=146167), so I decided to give UP8 a try.

Now my question is: what is the "correct" way of doing things? From earlier UP upgrades I learned that using graphical frontend "mintUpdate" caused some additional / unexpected issues and most often it was suggested to use the CLI instead in order to do the trick (apt update && apt dist-upgrade). Is this still true - or is it now "more safe" to use mintUpdate? Maybe it would be helpful to have a small section in the UP release notes regarding this?
And (related to that): there was also some confusion regarding the install / overwrite of existing config files. IIRC it was always suggested to keep existing versions of config files, but I'm not 100% sure any more regarding this.

Additionally I found the following sentence in the release notes:
"If you are using the Cinnamon edition, make sure to install mint-meta-debian-cinnamon"

Is that before or after doing the upgrade to UP8?

Finally: I read the release notes carefully and found the following points to be relevant for me:
- disabling screen saver during upgrade (this seemed to be a "hangover" from UP7)
- update debian-system-adjustments before starting upgrade at all (my version is from 2013-05-17)
- both plymouth and libpng12-dev are currently NOT installed so no further action required here

Please find result from ixi -r below...

Thanks for any help / tips on this in advance!

Have a great one & Cheers, Erik

Code: Select all

erik@inspiron-15r:~$ inxi -r
Repos:     Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list
           deb [arch=amd64,i386] http://linux-mint.froonix.org/ debian main upstream import
           deb [arch=amd64,i386] http://mirror.rts-informatique.fr/linuxmint/debian/latest testing main contrib non-free
           deb [arch=amd64,i386] http://mirror.rts-informatique.fr/linuxmint/debian/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
           deb [arch=amd64,i386] http://mirror.rts-informatique.fr/linuxmint/debian/latest/multimedia testing main non-free
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cassandra.sources.list
           deb http://debian.datastax.com/community stable main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/dropbox.list
           deb http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu maverick main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome-beta.list
           deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
           deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-musicmanager.list
           deb http://dl.google.com/linux/musicmanager/deb/ stable main
           Active apt sources in file: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-talkplugin.list
           deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main

[killer de bug]

I would advise you what have been advise a lot at that time. Coming from UP6 to UP8 is hard.
Download the iso and install from scratch.

If you don't, then read carefully the release note, install the packages which are mentioned first and then

Code: Select all

apt dist-upgrade

My personal advise: if you have plymouth installed, remove it before upgrading


Edit: 2nd advise!
Even if you want to go with an upgrade, please prepare a live USB stick with the new iso first. After you fight with troubles it will be too late

[ChipHobart]

Thanks for the quick reply...

OK, so going ISO-way...

Thanks again & Cheers,

Erik

[ChipHobart]

Just a small follow-up on this:
Installation of UP8 ISO worked like a charm and I was able to re-use my existing home partitions without any issues.

One draw-back, though: I am not able to get my HP Officejet 6500 network printer to work. I already tried to use the latest hplip version 3.14.6 but still the same result: when scanning for existing devices hplip is not able to detect my printer. Connecting to the embedded webserver of the printer works, though.

I will check the forum for similar issues - maybe it's an already known problem...

Cheers, Erik

EDIT:
I just found that CUPS is able to detect (and use) the printer without any problems so I decided to play around a bit with the hplip setup / configuration and after selecting "mDNS / Bonjour" as "Network discovery method" from the Advanced Options I was able to install my printer also through hplip!