Comments on: Ubuntu release testing not good

By: blog.centripetal.ca » Blog Archive » Newest Ubuntu Update Breaks Xorg

blog.centripetal.ca » Blog Archive » Newest Ubuntu Update Breaks Xorg — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:32:33 +0000

[...] Stuart Langridge (he of the excellent LugRadio) posts that the latest Ubuntu update breaks the Xserver install (more info in this forum post). That is, you click the little “there’s an update available” icon, let the installer do its thing, and your GUI doesn’t come back. That is stunningly appalling. [...]

By: Mike Hearn

Mike Hearn — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 11:14:22 +0000

It’s not really a fair comparison. XP SP2 was routinely installing over systems completely wasted by spyware and viruses, there’s no way you can make that robust. Canonical have no such excuse …

By: sil

sil — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:06:42 +0000

Colin: that was what I meant about “looking at the release procedures”; a move to dapper-proposed for not-obviously-correct stuff sounds like a good thing here.

I’ve been watching the update manager with trepidation for the last day and it hasn’t even shown the X update, which worries me a bit. I’ll have a look at that.

By: Colin Watson

Colin Watson — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 07:04:24 +0000

Following up on Tony’s comment, this one didn’t affect all users either, to the best of my knowledge …

Anyway, it’s easy for us to roll back an update; you just upload a new version backing out the offending patches, which Rodrigo did yesterday. I suspect we’ll stage non-obviously-correct updates such as this one via dapper-proposed in future, though.

By: Paul Nolan

Paul Nolan — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 21:05:08 +0000

Good thing I’m running edgy ;) (Where this sort of thing is supposed to happen)

By: Tony Whitmore

Tony Whitmore — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 17:36:42 +0000

Aq: Yeah, XP SP2 caused endless BSODs, running in 640×480, major application breakage or endless reboots for some people. Fairly serious errors, but admittedly they didn’t affect /all/ users. Lots of people had to hose their disks and reinstall though.

By: Senji

Senji — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:30:55 +0000

sil: I know two people who’ve been bitten by it already…

Unfortunately there’s no easy way of undoing an update, because most mirrors synch only once a day (you should easily be able to do it if you’re willing to wait that long for it to get to the subsidiary mirrors), and some of them won’t be under the control of ubuntu people who can resynch them.

By: sil

sil — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 12:29:24 +0000

Tony: as serious as “the GUI doesn’t work”?

By: Moitio

Moitio — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:54:53 +0000

You don’t know how grateful I am for you pointing this out. Thanks, I didn’t fancy trawling through the command line trying to fix someone else’s mistake… Thank fuck for that :)

By: Tony Whitmore

Tony Whitmore — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 11:30:59 +0000

Microsoft Service Packs /do/ break Windows in serious ways. And they don’t get as much grief as they should for it.

But I agree with the general point you make.