Comment 6 for bug 1815225

Please note: This bug also applies to Ubuntu 18.04 (in addition to 14.04 as originally reported).

But, there is a workaround which God Himself led me to (Praise Him!).

Because the laptop's hard drive was malfunctioning, God said if I removed it and then used the 128 GB flash drive as described above, then updates, even those including restarts, would work just fine.

And so I did. I removed the old 40 GB hard drive, and booted with the 128 flash drive. Then I ran Software Updater, which then required a restart. The updating-restart worked smoothly. I ran Software Updater once more, and it showed the system (on the 128 GB flash drive) was up-to-date.

I did notice previously that with the hard drive still in the laptop, even unmounted while booted with the 128 GB flash drive, the hard drive would always be /dev/sda. With the hard drive removed, the flash drive finally became /dev/sda, which is what I believe solved this Updater issue.

This is why I said earlier, and would still love for this to happen: Ubuntu should consider going this direction: having the "system" on a flash drive which people could take anywhere, bootable from any computer, AND update-able from any computer. Then they could convince a company to sell a device that is smaller, cheaper, hard-drive-less, and OS-less, which runs merely by plugging an Ubuntu USB drive into it as "the system". If Ubuntu would then work with MagicJack to get their great internet phone app to work with Linux, people could have both a real computer AND an internet (wifi) phone that they could take with them. Because let's face it: no one can "Libre Office" on a phone ! Check out a device like the GPD Pocket 2, and imagine it without a hard drive or an operating system. It would be perfect, replacing the need for cell phones for many, many people.

Thank you for the hearing.