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I have read What is a partial upgrade and when is it necessary?. I also have read Ubuntu 20.04 wants to do "partial upgrade" for newest kernel upgrade I am NOT running a development version, but rather production 22.04 LTS "current" regularly allowing Software Updater to update. I do not want an "upgrade" until production 24.04 that will upgrade in place is available. I have done the apt update etc. regimen, no change. Is this a software defect? Is it safe to "upgrade" a production system or will something "break"? The answer to the second URL above seems to indicate that it is safe -- but note that the upgrade my system faces is NOT a new linux kernel, just updated Nvidia proprietary driver software.

Yasha Karant
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    In my experience partial upgrades are bad news. It is an indication that something is wrong in the package system. I wouldn't do it without carefully examining the cause. – Organic Marble Jul 09 '23 at 14:52

2 Answers2

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A "partial upgrade" is often Bad News. It is usually offered when the user has unwisely added non-Ubuntu sources. Those sources, in turn, provide packages that version-conflict with upgrading other package on your Ubuntu system.

Eventually --perhaps next week, perhaps several years-- the system will break or will be so conflicted that further upgrades become impossible...including routine security upgrades.

Partial upgrades never fix themselves. If apt could fix it, it would. Apt is constrained by conflicting instructions from the human, so human intervention is always necessary. Partially-upgraded systems cannot be release-upgraded to a future release of Ubuntu. They must be repaired first.

The usual repair is to remove the non-Ubuntu source, uninstall the conflicting packages, and revert to stock Ubuntu as much as possible.

user535733
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  • Using Synaptic Package Manager, I found W: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386' W: http://www.geogebra.net/linux/dists/stable/InRelease: Key is stored in legacy trusted.gpg keyring (/etc/apt/trusted.gpg), see the DEPRECATION section in apt-key(8) for details. I need geogebra, and would like to have brave. The above never caused problems before. Suggestions? – Yasha Karant Jul 10 '23 at 03:29
  • Looking at the listing from software updater of the packages to be installed, nvidia seems to have gone from 530 to 535 and keeping both (is there a mechanism to post a screen shot to an Ask Ubuntu comment? -- that would clarify the above 530, 535 issue). Nvidia seems to be one source of such partial upgrade issues, but to get full use of a Nvidia GPU, one must use the Nvidia drivers and configuration/use tool set. – Yasha Karant Jul 10 '23 at 03:51
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In my case, I ran apt list --installed, then looked for packages that had a similar description to the below:

nvidia-settings/unknown,now 530.54.14-0ubuntu1 amd64 [installed,upgradable to 550.54.14-0ubuntu1 amd64]
nvidia-utils-550/unknown,now 530.54.14-0ubuntu1 amd64 [installed,upgradable to 550.54.14-0ubuntu1 amd64]

The ones that are alright are shown as this:

odbcinst1debian2/focal,now 2.3.6-0.1build1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
odbcinst/focal,now 2.3.6-0.1build1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
opencl-c-headers/focal,focal,now 2.2~2019.08.06-g0d5f18c-1 all [installed,auto-removable]

You want the Ubuntu version, in this case focal, to match your installed Ubuntu version (in my case, that's Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS (Focal Fossa)). This way, you can be sure that the version installed, corresponding to your package, has been approved for your version of Ubuntu.

The other thing that I noticed, in case of Nvidia, was that I was not able to uninstall one package and swap it for another; they had dependencies. When I went to over to Software & Updates -> Additional Drivers, it told me that I was using manually installed drivers, so I couldn't swap to a different version from their. My only choice was to manually uninstall it and point my graphics driver to Nouveau display (using this link) before restarting and attempting to reinstall using Software & Updates.

Arnab Joardar
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