Ubuntu 16.04 Repository Breaking an Update?

Got an interesting message from Software Updater. After waiting an hour to see if it was transient I went to my 16.04.01 VM to investigate it there:

Ran synaptic and it's perfectly happy. A bunch of updates but it worked ok. I did notice it had to remove a package: libgles1-mesa

Using the magic of a VM, I restored the snapshot and checked again but this time in a terminal:

sudo apt remove libgles1-mesa

Now, Software Updater was also happy - no more partial update message.

I conclude whatever state these updates are in, Software Updater (but not Synaptic) failed to recognize it had to remove libgles1-mesa to resolve whatever it was trying to do.

So if anyone else sees this:
Workaround1: Manually remove libgles1-mesa like I did above.
Workaround2: Use Synaptic and forget about what Software Updater says.
Workaround3: Wait and see if something clears up.

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Hallo

I had this this morning. I then updated via the terminal. 10 packages were held back, I’m reasonably certain the one you mention was one of them.

This doesn’t happen frequently, but I have seen it before.

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I noticed too but I used dist-upgrade and everything works fine.

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GRacias, desde ubuntu mate 16.04.2.

I had the same. Let the software updater do what was called a partial update. Took quite as while. Now all seems fine.
I am dual booting and grub looks different now

I had this one too
i just let the partial upgrade doing its job (it asked 2 times on some of the PCs) , then now it’s OK

Thanks for all the input! So the short answer seems to be…

Software Updater is needlessly alarming users.

The longer explanation…

Since I use Synaptic 100% for actual updating (so Synaptic history has no gaps), I installed updates in Software Updater in a VM I maintain.

While reporting it is doing a “Partial Upgrade”, Software Updater figures it out anyway, removes libgles1-mesa, and does the complete upgrade with no issue.

I conclude Software Updater has a bug in the reporting phase but it only shows up with certain upgrade paths. That is, the reporting phase didn’t account for a needed removal of a package in this case.

In the distant past, Software Updater used to be a Synaptic application of sorts. When performing an update, it even put it in Synaptic history (nicely searchable). But since it no longer does this, I’ve ONLY used Software Updater as a notifier and always, ALWAYS use Synaptic to actually update. I think I’ll continue like this. :slight_smile:

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Have seen this on 2 Xenial machines now. This is surprising, and not in a good way. :confused:
To my knowledge this is the first time this happened since I started using Ubuntu.

I’ve seen it in the past and it usually cleared up pretty quickly which made me think it was transient while repository mirrors updated. Partial files, partial upgrade I assumed. That’s why I waited an hour initially but it never did clear up.

And the problem seems to be isolated to update-manager. Synaptic never had a problem.