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I tried to upgrade from Ubuntu 16.04 to Ubuntu 18.04. First, after downloading and installing of packages, I was unable to login. Login screen hanged completely and it showed Failed to authenticate. But then I logged into tty1 and then logged in Ubuntu. It was saying that I am in Ubuntu 18.04. Then it asked for reboot. So I rebooted Ubuntu from terminal. It got stuck at something like /dev/sda4 : Cleaning files. After trying for a few times, I got into tty1 and here I logged in as root user and tried to update and upgrade. But now I am getting errors like unmet dependencies and broken packages. I have done sudo dpkg -- configure -a. I don't want to do a reinstall of Ubuntu. How do I get access to my Ubuntu Desktop?

Gautam Vashisht
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  • Is your 'home' folder installed in separate partition? If yes, then you can reinstall ubuntu 18.04 from the iso with same home folder. I upgraded to 18.04 from 16.04 but the texts and other themes were not proper. I have the 'home' folder in a different partitions. So I reinstalled the OS with same home folder. I had to install the softwares only and others settings and configurations remained same. – Ryko Apr 28 '18 at 17:24
  • No. My 'home' folder is in the same partition. Now I have completed removed Ubuntu and reinstalled it. Thanks for your help! – Gautam Vashisht Apr 30 '18 at 12:46

3 Answers3

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This was sort of expected, as an upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 isn't ready yet. It should be ready by "late July".

This is from 18.04's release notes:

Upgrading from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS or 17.10

Upgrades from 17.10 will not be enabled until a few days after 18.04's release. Upgrades from 16.04 LTS will not be enabled until a few days after the 18.04.1 release expected in late July.

Community
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mikewhatever
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I was getting "Failed to Authenticate" error while on upgrade with no password field in the form, it even showed 18.04 LTS on login screen. The error was like toast message on Android devices , keeps stacking up. I thought I had no option but to wait till July like in accepted option, but the below solution worked

I hit the enter multiple times , after like 20 attempts the "Failed to Authenticate" toast vanished and the screen was back to upgrade screen which was still in progress , Seems it was asking for password for some changes or something(I dont have access to logs now)

Finally upgrade was complete some clean up did happen on obsolete packages , now tested with restarted and logoff-login, I am able to login with Bionic Beaver without issues.

Morse
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  • Yeah, hitting enter does nothing. The useful part of this answer is that the update may still be in progress. Ctrl-Alt-F6, login, and check sudo apt dist-upgrade, if it can't lock the root process then it's still upgrading. Annoying, because they explicitly state "the lock screen will be disabled", which any user will interpret as "I WILL NOT SEE A LOCK SCREEN" – Chaim Eliyah Feb 04 '19 at 17:37
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Try removing the .Xauthority file in the home folder and restart your computer(or restart your desktop manager service).

To do that you need to switch to the virtual terminal (VT), since you cannot login to the desktop.

Here are the steps:

  1. To switch to a VT, press CTRL + ALT + F1 on the keyboard.

    Note: you can replace F1 with any keys between F1 and F6. Pay special attention if your F keys are mapped to Fn key functions.

  2. login in to the VT using your username and password.

    You will end up in your home directory.

  3. Delete the '.Xauthority' file using command:

    rm .Xauthority

  4. Reboot your system by running:

    sudo reboot

    Note: This reboot step can be replaced by restarting your desktop manager service,

    for 16.04:

    sudo systemctl restart lightdm

    for 18.04 and 20.04:

    sudo systemctl restart gdm

It worked for me.

sonic_pilot
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