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In the process of upgrading from Utopic Unicorn to Vivid Vervet, do-release-upgrade asked me which version of a configuration file to keep. I chose the option to run a (root) shell, noticed there were only a few small changes, and ran vim to merge the two versions. I'm used to using Ctrl+C to finish inserts, but it seems that in this case that actually killed something, as I was returned to one of my own shells.

After a bit of investigation, I noticed that the vim instance was somehow still running. I killed it and was returned to the root shell I'd started it from. I then exited the root shell, expecting to be returned to the upgrade script, but instead, the tmux instance I ran it in exited.

At this point, I can see that the script is still running and presumably doing something (it seems to consistently have 11% CPU usage). Unlike some cases similar to mine, there is no screen or byobu instance to reattach to—in fact, according to ps, it's lost its controlling terminal.

What happened here, and what should I do return my system to a sane state and complete the upgrade?

saji89
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Blacklight Shining
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1 Answers1

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Copy-paste from server fault:

AFAICT, there was no way to reattach to the upgrade process. However, it wasn't a disaster at all. I killed the hanging dpkg process, and then ran dpkg --configure -a. This walks you through reconfiguring all packages already installed on the system, tidying up any problems whilst it does so. After that, I used aptitude to upgrade the remaining packages, which had already been downloaded, but hadn't been installed or configured.

Courtesy: https://serverfault.com/q/387547/109361

Update:

If aptitude is not installed in your system, then the same can be done using apt-get, as I understand.

This is what worked for the OP:

The upgrade script had already changed the sources in /etc/apt/sources.list from Utopic to Vivid and disabled all the third-party sources. After dpkg --configure --pending and apt-get install --fix-broken, did apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade, and then rebooted, everything seems like it's working now.

More Info:

From the related bug report, doing apt-get dist-upgrade seems to be the key to get things working properly.

Community
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saji89
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  • Only one problem, you can't install aptitude at this point. – A.B. Jul 17 '15 at 05:02
  • @A.B, How can we know that its not installed already? Maybe its already installed, otherwise the same can be done using apt-get, as I understand. – saji89 Jul 17 '15 at 05:04
  • Than you should write that in your answer to avoid confusions. – A.B. Jul 17 '15 at 05:05
  • @BlacklightShining, systemd has replaced upstart in Ubuntu 15.04. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VividVervet/ReleaseNotes#Boot_and_service_management – saji89 Jul 17 '15 at 05:57
  • @BlacklightShining, This might help with the transition: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SystemdForUpstartUsers – saji89 Jul 17 '15 at 05:59
  • @BlacklightShining, That's great. I have added more information to the answer, including what worked for you. – saji89 Jul 20 '15 at 07:00