upgrade from 10.04 aborted

Asked by Harry Browne

Spent most of yesterday on upgrade from 10.04 to 12.04, on Acer Aspire One A110AB (Intel Atom processor 1.6GHz, 16gb ssd, 1gb RAM). Had about 2.3gb of free space to begin but cleared more on prompts during upgrade. Also got numerous illegible dialogue boxes of squares-for-letters, but 'OK'ed them, I think, on reading that they were an irrelevant Evolution artefact.
For the last ten hours the process has been frozen In stage 'Installing the Upgrades', with just 27min left, and the last progress item reading 'Installed mousetweeks'. The last few lines on the terminal read:
Setting up modemmanager (ubuntu 0.5.2.0-0ubuntu2) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/dBus-1/system.d/org.freedesktop.ModemManager.conf ...
initctl: Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist ...

initctl:dbus_error.c:69: Unhandled error from nih_dbus_error_raise: Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist

Aborted

At the moment the system appears to be more or less working -- I'm sending this through Chromium on it and I can look for files and edit documents in LibreOffice. 'Help and Support' doesn't open anything. My space is at 1.2gb.
I'm not Linux-technical especially but can follow instruction on the terminal.
Help, please?
Thanks!

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu update-manager Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
actionparsnip
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
sourav (gyro-sm) said :
#1

if possible back up ur data and install a fresh copy of 12.04

Revision history for this message
Harry Browne (harry-browne) said :
#2

Thank you, sourav, but I would consider that to be not so much advice/support as the obvious nuclear option, exactly the sort of thing I was trying to avoid by using the Update Manager to perform this upgrade.
In any case it appears not to recognise any USB drive I connect, a small problem for backup and a complicating one for installing a fresh copy.

Revision history for this message
Harry Browne (harry-browne) said :
#3

I restarted and have a semi functional system, seemingly 10.04 with Unity. Update manager says it can only do partial upgrade then fails to do that because it says relevant directory is in use by another process.

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#4

Try running:

sudo apt-get -f install

after a reboot

Revision history for this message
Harry Browne (harry-browne) said :
#5

Thank you @actionparsnip. Unfortunately trying to do this meets the same obstacle as other stuff I'm trying:

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)

E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?

The lock file in dpkg is there but marked with an X in the directory. There is no lock file in the apt cache.

I'm leaning toward the @sourav solution.

Revision history for this message
Best actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#6

sudo fuser -vki /var/lib/dpkg/lock;sudo dpkg --configure -a

Revision history for this message
Harry Browne (harry-browne) said :
#7

Thanks actionparsnip, that solved my question.