do-release-upgrade from 32-bit 16.04 to 18.04 goes ahead, doesn't work and messes everything up

[Alvaro Carballo Garcia]

I decided to test Ubuntu 18.04 on an old computer with 16.04 32-bit without knowing that only 64-bit was supported. do-release-upgrade seemed to perform all the actions without any problem. But, logically, the newly installed OS didn’t work.

After a quick research, I realised that the problem was the 32-/64-bit part and reinstalled the 16.04 32-bit version. I was forced to format the main partition as far as the 32-bit installer didn't recognise the 64-bit installation as a valid OS.

After finishing the 16.04 32-bit installation, performing the recommended updates and installing just a few programs (very stable and which I have always used on that computer), the OS started behaving weirdly. At first sight, it was working fine, but kept getting regularly frozen and not starting properly. Finally, I have been able to fix all the problems by deleting the old partitions, creating them again and reinstalling Ubuntu 16.04 32-bit.

Long story short: my computer has been behaving erratically for 2 days without never getting a clear indication about what might be wrong. Even worse, all this has been provoked because the OS allowed me to perform an impossible action. The fix seems also quite straightforward: avoid any 32-bit version to be upgraded unless that format is available.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1769433/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Alvaro Carballo Garcia (varocarbas)]

Adding the package.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

While support for the i386 installer image was removed, the 32 packages still exist in the archive so an upgrade from Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 18.04 should be fine. Just to be certain I tested this today and everything worked out. Do you happen to have any more details about how everything was messed up? Specifically log files of the upgrade would be helpful.

[Alvaro Carballo Garcia (varocarbas)]

After finishing the installation, I wasn't able to start the OS again (forever waiting with a black screen). The first thing I saw while looking for answers was that 32-bit wasn't supported, assumed that that was problem and reinstalled it again. In any case and as said, the installer didn't recognise the partition as a valid OS (either 64 bit was installed or something went completely wrong) and forced a formatting.

Regarding messing everything up, it might be caused by a different issue: an old Linux Kernel. Note that I use that computer under quite tough CPU/IO conditions (lots of reading/writing to a database) and that it is quite old. The last time I installed everything from scratch the load was much lower and these weird issues (e.g., getting regularly frozen and having to manually fsck at startup over and over) didn't happen, so I assumed that it was some of the files/modifications from the faulty 64-bit installation. But apparently it was some kind of bug which is fixed in the last stable Kernel. BTW, I relied on both MySQL and MariaDB and the later seems to manage the situation more gracefully (unnecessarily slow, but not showing the aforementioned behaviours).

[Alvaro Carballo Garcia (varocarbas)]

BTW, have you done your test on a 32-bit machine to be completely sure? The 18.04 32-bit version might be faulty (e.g., some 64-bit dependencies) and still work on a 64-bit machine.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

I tried a 32bit installation on natives 64bit and 32bit machines and didn't find any problem. Without any log it's nearly impossible to guess what happened with your upgrade.

[Alvaro Carballo Garcia (varocarbas)]

OK. Sorry but I have no logs. Additionally, if it is only a problem with my machine (quite old and crappy anyway), I wouldn't have bothered at all. The only reason for having started this thread was thinking that this might be useful for someone else. So, we can stop it here. Thanks.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thanks for following up. I'm closing this report then according to your last comment but will keep an eye on 32bit upgrades.

Don't hesitate to file any bug you may find.