Unreadable text during distupgrade: follow-up

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

[ Impact ]

This bug is a follow-up of bug #2034986. Please see that bug, especially comment #54 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/+bug/2034986/comments/54, for a more verbose background to this bug report.

The short story:

* Ubuntu Cinnamon is hit by 'the unreadable text issue' described in the other bug.

* Several Ubuntu flavors fail to reset the desktop font after reboot, since they lack the systemd integration needed for a user service to work.

The proposed changes include

* a correction of the applied gsettings schema for Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu MATE, and Ubuntu Kylin.

* use of an autostart file instead of a systemd service for a bunch of flavors.

[ Test Plan ]

Prepare updated 23.04 versions of Ubuntu Cinnamon, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Kylin, and Ubuntu Desktop.

Install version 1:23.04.7 of ubuntu-release-upgrader-core (may be in lunar-proposed)

For upgrading use: "update-manager -d -p"
(not sure if '-d' is still needed)

As regards Ubuntu Cinnamon (and Ubuntu MATE and Ubuntu Kylin):

* Confirm that the text is readable during the whole upgrade.

* Confirm after reboot that the command

  gsettings get org.cinnamon.desktop.interface font-name (or org.mate.interface)

  now outputs 'Ubuntu 11' and not the temporary 'Sans 11'.

As regards Ubuntu Desktop simply confirm that the upgrade works as intended and that you don't notice any regression.

[ Where problems could occur ]

I might have made some mistake as regards gsettings schemas and/or flavors which need autostart. But the code it straightforward, and I dare to say that the _set_generic_font() function works as intended for more flavors with the proposed changes. And if there would be a mistake with respect to some particular flavor, it would affect that flavor only.

[ Other Info ]

It's worth mentioning (here too) that the applied model for preventing the readability issue at upgrade, i.e. changing a dconf value which represents the desktop font, is not effective in the case of Kubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu. They are just not hit by the issue since the fonts they use have not changed during the cycle.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Hello Gunnar, or anyone else affected,

Accepted ubuntu-release-upgrader into mantic-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/1:23.10.12 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-mantic to verification-done-mantic. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-mantic. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-release-upgrader - 1:24.04.1

---------------
ubuntu-release-upgrader (1:24.04.1) noble; urgency=medium

  * do-release-upgrade: pass XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP env var (LP: #2034986)
  * Update for noble
  * Run pre-build.sh: updating po files, mirrors, and demotions.

ubuntu-release-upgrader (1:23.10.12) mantic; urgency=medium

  [ Gunnar Hjalmarsson ]
  * Adjustments of unreadable text workaround (LP: #2039356)

  [ Nick Rosbrook ]
  * Temporarily revert "do-release-upgrade: pass XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP env var"
    to unblock other fixes.
  * Run pre-build.sh: updating po files, mirrors, and demotions.

 -- Nick Rosbrook <email address hidden> Thu, 26 Oct 2023 15:23:52 -0400

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

I accomplished 23.04 -> 23.10 upgrades using u-r-u 1:23.10.12. After having consulted Brian Murray I downloaded mantic.tar.gz from

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/mantic-proposed/main/dist-upgrader-all/current/

extracted the files and started the upgrades this way:

sudo XDG_SESSION_TYPE=$XDG_SESSION_TYPE XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=$XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP ./mantic

Successful verification
-----------------------
* Cinnamon: Now upgrades without the UI becoming unreadable and cleans up nicely after reboot.

* Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu MATE: Fixed previously, but I confirmed that the latest change didn't result in a regression.

Issue with Ubuntu Kylin
-----------------------
Even if Ubuntu Kylin is not hit by 'the unreadable text issue' in mantic, it was included in the sample in order to confirm that the code works as expected. While setting the temporary font succeeded, resetting to the old font after reboot failed.

Generally, when examining the flavors for this purpose (comment #54 in bug #2034986), I assumed that in cases where a systemd user service didn't work, a simple autostart file should work. But in case of Ubuntu Kylin neither works, and I haven't found any hint in the syslog about the reason.

So where do we stand as regards the 1:23.10.12 changes? This failure as regards the cleanup in Ubuntu Kylin is not hurtful. Kylin's default desktop font is Noto, i.e. the same font as you get when querying fontconfig. So while we should make a note of the issue in a separate bug, I don't think we should let Kylin block the changes from making it to -updates. But since that conclusion is not obvious, I'm asking for a second opinion before changing the bug tags.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Marking this as verified after a brief consultation with Nick Rosbrook.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package ubuntu-release-upgrader - 1:23.10.14

---------------
ubuntu-release-upgrader (1:23.10.14) mantic; urgency=medium

  * DistUpgradeQuirks: prevent upgrades on BIOS systems with XFS /boot
    (LP: #2039172)
  * Run pre-build.sh: updating po files, mirrors, and demotions.

 -- Nick Rosbrook <email address hidden> Sun, 05 Nov 2023 01:39:16 -0400