19.3 to 20 - complete failure, extremely angry

[rene]

My criticism in this case is more the following: either the process of upgrade is stable, and it is pushed, or it isn't, and then it isn't pushed by a notification.

Oh, I quite agree. Have been around here for the upgrade from 17 to 18 which if I'm not mistaken was in fact the first time a major-version upgrade was offered in the first place so problems forgivable and moreover not used too much yet, from 18 to 19, a bit less so and many issues there were, and now from 19 to 20 which as far as the general impression from reading this forum goes is a bit of a disaster, and one now combined with the to 19 new System report thingy advertising it to unsuspecting users.

The issue is of course that the Mint team would/will not have expected serious issues --- and frankly most I've seen also seem to occur as a matter of even Mint 19 having been upgraded from 18, i.e., old gunk in the sense of cgmanager or KDE stuff still laying around which have in those two years gone from gracefully failing to simply bombing out. Well, yes, you can't test everything and given my views on people in-place upgrading between major versions in the first place I find it hard to feel sorry for them, but sure, still not a good idea to advertise an upgrade to these users.

But that said I do not feel it in any way likely that your BIOS issue was anything specific to the upgrade from 19 to 20 as such. We have seen similar behaviour here on the forum of no longer being able to boot from USB and/or being being all of a sudden unable to enter the BIOS setup as a matter of buggy early UEFI implementations. Haven't in fact dug through this thread to see if you have specified enough of your system to be able to confirm/deny that possibility but there really seems to be no other option than quite system-specific trouble as to that issue you had. Again, you can't test everything and certainly not every system out there, and if indeed we're talking about that rare issue involving installing any OS in UEFI mode on some systems, well, you'd just be out of luck there I'd feel: would not feel the update to be responsible in that case, even if it would be in a practical sense.

But otherwise then, yes. I wish Mint would go back to not supporting major version upgrades, certainly back to not advertising them. Way too much trouble with them.

[trytip]

I took a Timeshift snapshot before upgrading, when the upgrade failed I used Timeshift to restore my 19.03......... The restore failed.......

just now i created a timeshift snapshot, and right after i restored it. the system would not boot. i pushed reset on the PC and rebooted fine. moral of the story is need more info as to what means failed.

[Ringel05]

I took a Timeshift snapshot before upgrading, when the upgrade failed I used Timeshift to restore my 19.03......... The restore failed.......

just now i created a timeshift snapshot, and right after i restored it. the system would not boot. i pushed reset on the PC and rebooted fine. moral of the story is need more info as to what means failed.

It froze halfway through the restore. Happy now?

[trytip]

I took a Timeshift snapshot before upgrading, when the upgrade failed I used Timeshift to restore my 19.03......... The restore failed.......

just now i created a timeshift snapshot, and right after i restored it. the system would not boot. i pushed reset on the PC and rebooted fine. moral of the story is need more info as to what means failed.

It froze halfway through the restore. Happy now?

i feel much better now

[Ringel05]

just now i created a timeshift snapshot, and right after i restored it. the system would not boot. i pushed reset on the PC and rebooted fine. moral of the story is need more info as to what means failed.

It froze halfway through the restore. Happy now?

i feel much better now

Ya have to realize many of us are just venting, we're not all looking for a "fix" as we've already got 20 to work or like me had to do a clean install of 19.3 to get it to work.
I won't be looking to upgrade (clean install) LM 20 for a while, at least until they work out what appears to be MAJOR bugs.

[trytip]

Ya have to realize many of us are just venting, we're not all looking for a "fix" as we've already got 20 to work or like me had to do a clean install of 19.3 to get it to work.
I won't be looking to upgrade (clean install) LM 20 for a while, at least until they work out what appears to be MAJOR bugs.

i totally get it, as i have posted many times i have never not once been able to upgrade any of my linux installations. point releases of ubuntu i mean. but i'm one to modify and rip open the root partition to change things as i think they should be. for instance in my 19.3 mint cinnamon i removed the use of root admin passwords. do you know how nice it is to open an application upgrade or update to your hearts content close it and open it again just because i can and not be bothered by password boxes?
vent away

[Ringel05]

Ya have to realize many of us are just venting, we're not all looking for a "fix" as we've already got 20 to work or like me had to do a clean install of 19.3 to get it to work.
I won't be looking to upgrade (clean install) LM 20 for a while, at least until they work out what appears to be MAJOR bugs.

i totally get it, as i have posted many times i have never not once been able to upgrade any of my linux installations. point releases of ubuntu i mean. but i'm one to modify and rip open the root partition to change things as i think they should be. for instance in my 19.3 mint cinnamon i removed the use of root admin passwords. do you know how nice it is to open an application upgrade or update to your hearts content close it and open it again just because i can and not be bothered by password boxes?
vent away

When it comes to Linux I guess I'm somewhere between an advanced beginner and a n00b intermediate user. There's a lot I can do but don't because I like things to work out of the box, old Windows user which is why I ended up with Linux Mint. I actually hate coding of any kind and prefer easy to use graphical interfaces for pretty much everything.
That is often a challenge for me when I run into a problem and go looking for answers. Too many advanced Linux users have forgotten what it is to be a n00b and they provide an answer that might as well be written in Greek without instruction on how the get to the places to input the fix........

[DoodMann]

Including me, as I came from Win10. I totally agree on using GUI's instead of CLI. But with patience, internet, you can totally make CLI a piece of cake. I prefer CLI now because you can see what is really going on with your system when you press that Enter button. But you can still ofcourse use GUI if that what makes your life easier, as for my point is seeing what the operating system is doing to your computer after typing the command.

[Spearmint2]

I wonder how many having upgrade problems on UEFI computers, installed the first version with secure boot off in the BIOS, and just forgot about it, but later have Secure Boot enabled, changed the bootloader to efibootmgr, and then forget to turn off the Secure Boot for the new install or the upgrade (if necessary for such)? It's easy to forget such steps after a couple years, then when secure boot disables booting allowed from USB, suddenly they blame the BIOS for what it has done from the beginning when set to Secure Boot?

[Spearmint2]

And seemingly more to the point, this is by now the umpteenth report of upgrade failure, especially the ones where even 19 was upgraded from 18.

Yes, I know "clem" posted a tutorial to upgrade but upgrading between major versions has always been a bad idea, and has seemingly gone from just a bad idea to an outright lousy one this time around. So stop trying to upgrade between major versions and bloody well reinstall. It's approximately 10 times as fast in the first place so what is this friggin' nonsense all about anyway?

Yes, clearly, the Mint team should stop presenting a major-version upgrade as an option in all but the most dire of circumstances where one really does not want to install new but it's not actually forbidden to use one's own brain either. You are ripping the base out from under an OS and replacing it with something that is in essence 2 years newer. Do not, or potentially suffer every detail that has crept in over those two years. Or 4 years. Or 6 years. Or...

Not speaking for Mint in case that wasn't obvious. Just for sanity.

What does that say then about distros like Debian and Devuan and others that use "rolling upgrades"? Does it work OK with those distros, or similar problems? I've been waiting to see if Devuan comes out with it's "unstable ceres" as a "release" this 2021 year, and I think they do "rolling upgrades" in theirs.

[Spearmint2]

I still recommend a clean upgrade, at least for root when you have a seperate /home. Also, that's a major upgrade, it's like updating Windows. You can't upgrade to Win10 from Win7.

Actually you CAN upgrade from W7 to W10 with no problems. I had to do that for my wife's "work at home" laptop during this pandemic. Instead of using the Media Creator which microsoft offers, you can download the W10 ISO file, extract it into a folder in W7, and then run the setup file to upgrade the computer, while retaining your files. The Media Creator however will create a full install method for putting W10 on a computer, instead of just upgrading. The upgrade is time consuming, but it can be done successfully.

viewtopic.php?p=1787567#p1787567

[antikythera]

The upgrade is time consuming, but it can be done successfully.

Yes and once done you can clean install W10 in future if necessary using the now activated for W10 machine. You don't enter a key, just use the 'I don't have a key' option and it will activate anyway when you connect to the internet.

Also, the ability to upgrade any W7 machine free of charge is still there via the in-place upgrade route. MS didn't turn off the feature on their activation server and currently you don't have to mess with the date and time either. They seem to have done that on purpose now as they'd rather take the marginal financial hit and have people running W10 than W7. Windows stopped making them any serious money back in 2015 so they really don't care if people get free upgrades now. They make more money from subscription and cloud products.

[rossdv8]

Ok, I killed my Mint 19.3 trying to upgrade to Mint 20. Fortunately I have two good roots at home, one with the OS I am using, and one for 'the next greatest thing' (in this case Mint 20). So I don;t usually get myself into this situation.

However, I have come across the can't boot from USB on AUS and a couple of other notebooks.

ASUS has this link for people with this problem.

https://www.asus.com/au/support/FAQ/1013017/

It may not help, but it 'might' get the OP out of trouble.
Hot keys like F8 and F7 may be different for HP and Lenovo computers, but most of the BIOSy stuff should be there and the Boot information from UEFI mode, and the Advanced Settings and Disable Fast Boot are pretty standard across the board, so people should be able to find similar stuff in their BIOS.

It is not always 'Mint's Fault' when this stuff happens. As someone else posted -= blame the idiots who designed UEFI, or better still, those who created the need to add complications to a reasonably good BIOS system...

[ThrashZone2]

Hi,
Thankfully I never worry too much about if I loose anything on linux because most is backed up anyway
Only thing I worry about is the grub sludge linux insists on adding and getting rid of that unnecessary crap off ssd/ hdd's.

[Larry78723]

Only thing I worry about is the grub sludge linux insists on adding and getting rid of that unnecessary crap off ssd/ hdd's.

Every Linux distro I've loaded on my machines uses grub. What do you consider "grub sludge"?

[ThrashZone2]

Only thing I worry about is the grub sludge linux insists on adding and getting rid of that unnecessary crap off ssd/ hdd's.

Every Linux distro I've loaded on my machines uses grub. What do you consider "grub sludge"?

Hi,
Grub on a non linux installed ssd = a data ssd that was not connected when I installed linux why should a grub be installed later on it.

[Reddog1]

Wait. Have you re-ordered your disk sequence (maybe moved your original boot drive from the SATA port it was in to a different port and plugged your new ssd into the SATA port that your original drive was plugged into? That will definitely mess up boot, because I've done it. Plugging the original drive into its original port and the new drive into a different port will fix that. No need to reinstall grub.

[Spearmint2]

I don't have UEFI BIOS to check on, so I'm wondering if the UEFI part of the BIOS is programmed for only 64 bit and maybe that's why it has to be put in Legacy Mode to boot older 32 bit systems? In a link I gave just above, I had a problem using 32 bit linux Archive Manager to extract an ISO for W10, probably created on a 64 bit system, onto a FAT32 formatted flashdrive, (got File Split Error) and it only worked when I extracted it to USB flashdrive formatted to NTFS for some reason. I marked it down at the time to something odd done by microsoft in creation of their ISO for W10, which I'd downloaded from MSFT. Maybe some problem in extracting files created on a 64 bit system onto a 32 bit FAT32 formatted drive?

Update: Reddog1 has the correct answer to what I posted!

The reason you got the file split error with Fat32 is that the FAT32 system is limited to 4GB (file sizes). I've used a program to split a large file into 2 files to comply with the FAT32 limitations--I think the program was 'wodim', but that won't help your situation.

[Reddog1]

I didn't realize you were trying to boot 32 bit Linux efi. As far as I know, there are no 32 bit Linux distros that have a UEFI bootloader, and if I'm wrong I'm sure someone will correct me. Legacy mode is the only choice for booting 32 bit Linux that I know of. Windows 8 versions could boot 32 bit UEFI, but my impression is that W10 is 64 bit only, but can be installed in Legacy mode. W7 64 bit was UEFI --32 bit W7 is Legacy only. Older OSx had a 32 bit bootloader (my white macbook) and I can boot 64 bit Mint and 32 bit OSx--the actual OSx system is 64 bit, but the bootloader is 32, which confuses grub and grub will show both a 32 bit Apple system and a 64 bit Apple system, but only boot the 32 bit Apple bootloader because that's all there is. If you have 32 bit Mint I think you might be stuck, and the best you can do is save your files to an external drive, wipe your 32 bit Linux and install 64 bit and then reconstruct your files from the external drive. That operation takes some time, but it definitely can be done successfully.

The reason you got the file split error with Fat32 is that the FAT32 system is limited to 4GB. I've used a program to split a large file into 2 files to comply with the FAT32 limitations--I think the program was 'wodim', but that won't help your situation.

[AndyMH]

The reason you got the file split error with Fat32 is that the FAT32 system is limited to 4GB. I've used a program to split a large file into 2 files to comply with the FAT32 limitations--I think the program was 'wodim', but that won't help your situation.

You can split a file with the split terminal command, man split for more info.