[dist-upgrader] User should be prompted to update *before* the upgrade process starts

[Christian Convey]

I'm running Breezy. I followed the directions here:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2006-May/000081.html
to upgrade to the Dapper release candidate. Specifically, I ran:
gksudo "update-manager -d"

After I'd navigated the prompts from update-manager, it acted as expected: started downloading packages, etc. No problem here.

The problem is that while this was happening, the little update-manager icon on the Gnome toolbar popped up its little message box telling me that there are new updates available, and to I want to install them now or be reminded later.

So the specific bug is that while I'm in the middle of an upgrade, I shouldn't be prompted by that little toolbar-icon asking me if I want to install updates. First of all, it's a silly question. And (for all I know), if I *had* clicked on that "install updates" link in the message, would carnage have ensued from having two instances of system-update software running at the same time?

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

> And (for all I know), if I *had* clicked on that "install updates"
> link in the message, would carnage have ensued from having two
> instances of system-update software running at the same time?

That fortunately isn't possible, clicking on that icon would have caused
an error like "Another package manager is already running, you can run
only one package manager at the same time"

[Paul Dufresne (paulduf)]

Enough info for confirming, even if I don't know if it does this now in 7.10 or Hardy.

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

We often suggest that people update their system fully at the current version before running dist-upgrade (in particular to get the latest changes to update manager itself). The update manager should prompt for this at the start of any dist-upgrade process. I'm changing the title to reflect this.

[to be removed (liw)]

I attempted to reproduce this. Turns out it is not so easy, with stuff moved from archive.ubuntu.com to old-releases.ubuntu.com, and update-manager telling me at every turn to upgrade to a newer release without giving me the opportunity to do so.

From what I can read from the current source code, update-manager doesn't upgrade the system to current pacakges in the current release before dist-upgrading. I'm not sure it should: while doing so is often sensible, sometimes it requires upgrading things like the kernel, which result in a need to reboot, and all this makes the dist-upgrade experience less smooth.

Do we really need to push users to upgrade before dist-upgrading? Are there frequent problems if they don't do that?

We already push people to upgrade pretty frequently, so most people, most of the time, should have nothing to upgrade to, anyway. And the rest probably don't want to.

[trlkly (terrell-kelley)]

Well, shouldn't the restart prompt, in most cases, be saved for after all other updates actions have been performed? And couldn't kernel updates be ignored in the case provided by Henrik Nilsen Omma?

[to be removed (liw)]

Now that I think of it, update-manager (at least in jaunty) does show all the updates for the current distro release,
even when it shows the button to do a dist-upgrade. I think part of this bug is thus fixed now.

Since jaunty, we also don't have the "new updates available" notifier in the notification area, by default. I wonder if it is reasonable to close this bug, or at least lower its importance to low?

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Actually, I am considering raising it, not lowering. This is something that should be confirmed just before an upgrade, and would inhibit some of the bugs we have seen on this cycle.

[RussianNeuroMancer (russianneuromancer)]

Isn't this bug already fixed?

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug #147928, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.