Hello all, It's Guy from Northern Ohio. I ran an apt-get update && dist-upgrade this past Thursday evening. Since then, I am unable to boot up to a mate desktop. I am totally blind, so unable to see what kind of errors I'm getting. Is there a way to fix this from a live CD or SSH from another machine? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
There were a lot of time_64t migrations planned earlier this year that will impact both Debian testing/sid and Ubuntu noble schedule end of March 2024.. and these are what are creating issues.
How machines were impacted can vary on the time you performed 'dist-upgrade' & what packages you had installed (ie. how impacted). The machine I'm using now was barely impacted (I didn't even notice it until I checked for it!) but another machine with almost the identical packages using the same mirror, but was upgraded 3 hours earlier required me to spend time fixing (which involved me downloading packages on this machine, copying to thumb-drive, walking to other machine & manually installing before I could fix the rest on my other machine there).
I'll provide details from the recent Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter which may provide some clues, and highlight somewhat recent warnings.
Attention Upgrading noble systems
Julian Andres Klode (28 March 2024) puts out a warning for Ubuntu noble (24.04) users that they should “pay close attention to dist-upgrade output”. We’re given reasons for this, and told the situation will be resolved later today.
Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 833 - Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Issue 833 - Ubuntu Weekly News - Ubuntu Community Hub
Do note the second link was added, which my summary (what I quote from UWN) doesn't cover as it summarizes only the first link. ie. the 'resolved later today' was changed as new issues appeared
The major issue I encountered was my installed desktops disappearing (I have multiple installed & all disappeared), plus on the one machine I also lost all networking (why I had to use this box to download a package & walk it to the other box).
This box does not have the MATE desktop yet installed, as if I try for example to install just caja, I get
caja : Depends: caja-common (= 1.26.3-1) but 1.26.3-1build1 is to be installed
Depends: libcaja-extension1 (= 1.26.3-1) but 1.26.3-1build1 is to be installed
Depends: mate-desktop but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgail-3-0 (>= 3.0.0) but it is not going to be installed
The other issue that's been actively worked on this weekend is the xz-utils mess, so Ubuntu developers have been busy, let alone the time_64t migration taking time (for package compiles etc).
I don't have any timeline on when the MATE desktop itself will be complete fixed (package wise), and maybe others can provide more than I can, but I'd expect the issues to be resolved by Thursday 4 April 2024.
Sorry I can't provide more (and current dailies won't have newer packages than currently exist in repositories, as the ISOs lag behind)
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If I were to download packages from another machine and walk them over to this one, how would I perform that install, since I don't seem to have any access to a console?
The packages needed to be installed varied on when the full-upgrade (or dist-upgrade) was performed.. That and I'm unsure as to what your actual issue is, and thus what actually needs to be installed.
I mentioned my other machine in that I needed to get networking up & running, as after that I could just install the meta desktop package & have whatever was needed download & install easily (like what I did on this my primary machine).
A quick check on this box done earlier still notes issues with caja, ie.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
caja : Depends: caja-common (= 1.26.3-1) but 1.26.3-1build1 is to be installed
Depends: libcaja-extension1 (= 1.26.3-1) but 1.26.3-1build1 is to be installed
Depends: libgail-3-0 (>= 3.0.0) but it is not going to be installed
so there may still be problems... The good news is that there are fewer problems than appeared in my prior comment (ie. only 3 of 4).
I said 4 April for a reason, as that's the beta release date & we need problems fixed by then (so we have a Ubuntu-MATE ISO to release in beta) thus how close we are.
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