Precise ubiquity fails to provide a reinstall option

[Erick Brunzell]

Apologies in advance, I know this gets a bit convoluted, but I've been working on verification for bug #1066347 as it relates to 12.04 for about 48 hours and I've run into many obstacles, some just relating to my lack of consistent testing of the "Reinstall - Documents, music, and other personal files will be kept. Installed software will be kept where possible. System-wide settings will be cleared" option. But first things first;

I began testing the "reinstall" option in Precise with an existing and updated Precise but I was not offered that option, only:

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=230227&d=1358480760

Knowing that we began offering upgrade and reinstall options with Maverick I installed Oneiric and tried. This was OK, although it does say "upgrade Oneiric to Oneiric" rather than reinstall:

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=230178&d=1358427210

I then tried an upgrade via live CD from Oneiric to Precise 20130115-i386 and all worked as expected.

I then also tried Lucid -> Precise and again all was well.

But since then I've tried numerous Precise -> Precise reinstall efforts and I always just get:

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=230229&d=1358480760

The latest test was with Precise 20130117.1-i386.

Since we have only about 4 weeks to get the 12.04.2 images right I hope we can get this fixed as I find the upgrade and reinstall options offered by the live images to be one of the best things we've ever done ;^)

NOW, as to why I filed the bug this way. I guess apport doesn't think ubiquity is an official package anymore:

http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=230231&d=1358484133

Maybe I need to report a separate bug regarding that?

FINALLY, the Quantal images seem to be fine if that matters.

Apologies again but I'm a bit lost ....... maybe more than a bit.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, and refresh my memory, I ran tests on Oneiric, Precise, Quantal, and Raring i386 images and a summary of results is as follows:

Oneiric; The 11.10 final image offers upgrade, reinstall, and downgrade - BUT all are referred to as upgrades.

Precise; The 12.04 final, 12.04.1 final, and 12.04.2 (20130117.1) images only offer upgrades - no reinstall or downgrade.

Quantal; The 12.10 final image offers upgrade and reinstall, named appropriately - but no downgrade.

Raring; The 13.04 (20130119) image offers both upgrade and reinstall - BUT both are referred to as upgrades.

I'm not sure that's helpful at all but thought it was worth sharing.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

I marked this invalid based on info provided here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt-clone/+bug/1066347/comments/10

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

And to clear up a few things:
During quantal I noticed that upgrade option was not offered and I believe I have fixed it. And we had to draw a line somewhere, we do not want to provide "downgrade" option as that is not supported in any sane way. The upgrade is also tricky, as one needs to consider what is considered "current". Thus, the way it's currently implemented "any development release daily image can upgrade/downgrade any development install" (e.g. raring pre-release from day 1 can be "upgraded" using raring from today and vice versa raring install from today can be "downgraded" using raring from day 1) as there is no way to check if the development install is "ahead" or "behind" the booted installation media. In either cases the text to the user will refer to "Upgrading"

But for the final released 13.04 image and installs of 13.04, it should not offer any "upgrade" options. 13.04 released final image should only offer upgrades for 12.10 installations and older.

At the moment this is the desired design and expectation.

[Erick Brunzell (lbsolost)]

Thanks Dmitrijs. I personally rather liked the live image upgrade but it was problematic in that it was never properly documented, and it was never adequately tested. I've been speaking with Nicholas Skaggs about this for some time at Ubuntu forums and most recently via the Lubuntu QA mailing list:

https://lists.launchpad.net/lubuntu-qa/msg02164.html

Apologies for my poor communication skills, but I'm old and tired.