[SOLVED] Upgrade from Mint 12 LXDE : impossible

[marz12]

Hi,
I have recently installed Linux Mint on several old PCs running Win XP (guess why!).
No problem for most of them. But two PCs were unable to boot from anything else than a CD (tried DVD, bootable USB with win4mint, Plop Boot Manager, Plop Linux...)
So I decided to try to install first Mint 12 LXDE on them, which is small enough to be on a CD. And then I tried to upgrade the distro. I know that this way of upgrading is not recommended but it seemed to me the last way of getting Linux.

I followed this (mainly post by nunol on Mon Nov 19, 2012 2:41 pm)
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 9&p=738660

Results:

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$ more /etc/issue
Linux Mint 12 LXDE

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$ uname -r
3.2.0-60-generic

(but the Linux kernel for Linux Mint 12 LXDE should be 3.0 ?)

I am also quite satisfied with Linux Mint 12 LXDE (except for security issues - does the 3.2 kernel solve it?) but I would like to know what I did wrong.
Thanks for any help...

PS Please forgive my bad English.

[karlchen]

Hello, marz12.

You talked of having upgraded the distro. This statement and the presence of kernel K3.2.0-60 suggests that you may have upgraded from Linux Mint 12 to Linux Mint 13.
There is a pretty simple way of verifying whether this is true.
Please, open a terminal window. Execute the following commands and post the complete screen output here:

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lsb_release -rd

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inxi -Fxz

Kind regards,
Karl

[marz12]

Hello Karl,

thank you for your answer.
Here are the results:

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$ lsb_release -rd
Description:	Linux Mint 12 LXDE
Release:	12

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$ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: XXX-A5020 Kernel: 3.2.0-60-generic i686 (32 bit, gcc: 4.6.3) 
           Desktop: LXDE (Openbox 3.5.0) Distro: Linux Mint 12 LXDE
Machine:   System: Acer (portable) product: Aspire 5020 version: -1
           Mobo: Acer model: Aspire 5020 version: Rev.A Bios: Phoenix version: V1.13 date: 09/09/2005
CPU:       Single core AMD Turion 64 Mobile ML-30 (-UP-) cache: 1024 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3) bmips: 1600.01 clocked at 800.00 MHz 
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV410/M26 [Mobility Radeon X700] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.11.3 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1280x800@60.1hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RV410 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 8.0.4 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller driver: snd_atiixp bus-ID: 00:14.5
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: 1.0.24
Network:   Card-1: Broadcom BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller driver: b43-pci-bridge bus-ID: 06:05.0
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Realtek RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: a000 bus-ID: 06:07.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 164.0GB (4.1% used) 1: /dev/sda SAMSUNG_HM160HC 160.0GB 
           2: USB /dev/sdb Cruzer_Edge 4.0GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 11G used: 3.9G (38%) fs: ext4 ID: /boot size: 461M used: 55M (13%) fs: ext4 
           ID: /home size: 24G used: 381M (2%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 2.00GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
Sensors:   Error: You do not have the sensors app installed.
Info:      Processes: 132 Uptime: 3 min Memory: 148.8/1000.2MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.6.3 Client: Shell inxi: 1.7.33 

It seems to be stuck to 12 LXDE, but with Mint 13's kernel.

what I did:
- sudo apt-get purge mint-search-addon
- opened /etc/apt/sources.list file, replaced "lisa" with "maya" and "oneiric" with "precise", commented LXDE specific repo and medibuntu (cause errors)
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get upgrade
- sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
- sudo apt-get update
- sudo apt-get install mint-meta-core
and rebooted.
also tried the upgrades with -f option. No error, it only said that the package mint-artwork-gnome had not been updated.

Thank you.

[marz12]

Hello,
installing Linux Mint 17 xfce was possible with DVD and this has solved my problem.
Thank you for you help and thanks to Linux Mint team for the good work.

[karlchen]

Hello, marz12.

Congratulation on making "the big leap forward" from Mint 12/13 to Mint 17.

Cheers,
Karl

[MtnDewManiac]

But two PCs were unable to boot from anything else than a CD (tried DVD, bootable USB with win4mint, Plop Boot Manager, Plop Linux...)

There is a thread in this forum (somewhere) in which a couple of people helped me download a Mint .ISO, place it in a certain directory/folder, do some "magic" which caused the .ISO to appear as a choice in my grub(?) menu on my next reboot, and allow me to actually boot to that .ISO as if it were a regular DVD. This allowed me to do so and run its installation process. IIRC (If I remember correctly), I had to have two (plus the cache partition, of course) partitions on my hard drive so that the installation process did not overwrite the .ISO that I was running. But it has been a while and I am not certain.

I wish I had remembered to bookmark that thread. I have no functioning optical drive and this laptop cannot boot from USB - so the above procedure would be the only way for me to do a clean install of linux on it .

Regards,
MDM