Score:1

Why doesn't this Software Updater warning tell me what is going to be installed?

us flag

I just received this warning...

Not all updates can be installed

However, I have no idea which option that I should choose.

How are [Partial Upgrade] and [Continue] any different?

What does [Continue] do? Does it continue the update?

Why can't I tell what will happen? How can I determine if this was caused by "A previous upgrade which didn't complete"?

Also, there doesn't seem to be a [Cancel] option.

user535733 avatar
cn flag
Opinion: Choose "Continue", as it will do the least damage. You must troubleshoot your system to determine which of those four problems you have, and then correct that problem, before worrying about updates again. DON'T ignore the problem -- they tend to get worse (not better) with time. Troubleshooting tends to be much easier using the shell (command line). The graphical desktop tools are simply much lest robust for the purpose of troubleshooting.
Score:-1
us flag

The best answer is to click [Continue] so you can see the list of items in the update.

I clicked the [Continue] button and saw the following... (it took two snapshots to show all the info.

updates, part 1 updates, part 2

I notice that the top (greyed out) text says, "Install or remove"

I suppose it is going to remove those items in the future (since they are not checked).

I went ahead with these updates to see what they will do.
Hopefully my NVidia drivers will still work.

After I clicked the button to allow the update I saw the very odd partial window...

partial software update window

(very odd)

Can't tell what happened, will reboot.

After Reboot

After reboot and restarting I saw the same first two screens with the same list of updates (obviously it didn't run before) and then I saw the update window running updates normally...

normal updates

However, after that finished I saw this window again:

partial updates window

I clicked the [Continue] button and then saw the following:

updates completed

I'll reboot again.

After 2nd Reboot

After rebooting once again I ran Software Updater again and it showed me this window again:

partial updates window

However, when I clicked [Continue] again I saw the following so I'm considering this a completed update.

update complete

Merilyn Ne avatar
sy flag
When you see `Partial Upgrade` option, it means that there's package update that requires removal of an existing package. Software Updater tries to keep back that package update, so it shows you `Partial Upgrade` option.
Merilyn Ne avatar
sy flag
To get rid of it, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run command: `sudo apt full-upgrade`, which performs package updates including the one kept back by Software Updater. Before typing **y** to confirm the action, it's better to keep an eye in terminal output to see which package it's going to remove!
raddevus avatar
us flag
I've helpfully documented the "average" user's experience & that is the actual answer.
xtrchessreal avatar
eg flag
@MerilynNe Does using the `sudo apt full-upgrade` upgrade the OS from 20.04 LTS to 22.04 LTS?
Merilyn Ne avatar
sy flag
@xtrchessreal no, this command only installs package updates. Upgrading OS version is handled by another tool `do-release-upgrade`
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