How Upgrade Linux Mint for First Time in Years

[js10]

ADMINISTRATOR'S NOTE: I have carved the following off from an existing thread elsewhere, where it was getting too confusing.
Wizard.

How old is your install of Linux Mint xfce ?

Have you , at any time, taken snapshots via Timeshift?

Or do you have any sort of backup?

Condobloke,

So we meet again! You probably don't remember, but we have interacted before elsewhere in cyberspace. In fact, it just might even be you I referred to in my first post in this thread who is responsible for me being here at all!

But, anyway, the installation is just over three years old now -- I'm pretty sure it was September of 2018. Timeshift (which I believe we also discussed before) seems to take up too much space for my system, so, no, I've never been able to use it. And, no, no backup of the OS -- just individual entities (documents obviously, my Chrome/Chromium bookmarks, etc.). Truth be told, if I did, this wouldn't be as concerning, as now would probably be the time to put the backup into use.

 

[js10]

Hmm... I'm wondering if they screwed something up.

I also find this extremely concerning. I definitely don't trust the motivations of someone who was the cheapest person you could get to do your install.

Well, I hear you, but as stated in my response to Condobloke, this install dates back to September of 2018. Wouldn't that make a lot more sense if it had been problematic right off the bat? I mean, do you think he could have been sophisticated enough to install some kind of "time bomb" type thing that would only start acting up years later? Plus, he did genuinely seem to want to get the job done right, although I guess that could have just been good acting.

Also, it might very well be true that turning off HA stopped the freezing problem, but it's also true that even when it was happening, days would go by without it happening, so it's still pretty soon. Plus, as I said in my first post, there have always been different variations (although what happened today is I think a new one). So, to me, it seems like just another form of sudden nonperformance!

 

[Fanboi]

As KGIII said, installing yourself is probably the best move and very easy. With any luck, you have /home on a different partition, in which case you can simply install the OS with manual partitioning and set that partition for home and choose not to format it, thus saving on tedious backups. However, if this was cheap, chances are your IT guy did a default vanilla install and it's "everything on one partition". This could actually cause other issues. I mentioned some hypotheticals about memory earlier "just for the sake of it", but it may be an actual problem. Please post the following outputs:

df
free

 

[Condobloke]

Yes I remember. I recognised your user name when you first posted here.

While you are at the keyboard, click on menu....and type in Welcome.

Your version etc of Linux Mint will be in the bottom right hand corner, along with 32 or 64 bit

 

[KGIII]

Wouldn't that make a lot more sense if it had been problematic right off the bat?

It would. It would indeed. The Chrome freezing issue is resolved, but this is disconcerting.

It's nearly midnight, so my brain isn't not functioning as well as it could.

I don't suppose you know if there was a major kernel update recently?

I have a piece of hardware where I had to roll back to the previous long-term-stable kernel because the newest kernel was simply not working.

Also, that's a long time to go without reinstalling. You can do that with Linux, but it might be worth considering a fresh installation. I'd send you to an install party from your local user group, but there's this COVID thing still impacting us.

Anyhow, somewhere in this thread I mentioned something called 'ksystemlog'.

The next time your system slows down like this, open ksystemlog to see what errors are popping up.

 

[DexTheDog]

Hello. First post here in the linux.org forum, but I've been using Linux (as in Linux Mint XFCE) for a few years now (previously I've asked my questions about it at another forum, but was told about this one and wanted to start asking in a forum actually dedicated to Linux).

My question is about what I describe as "super freezes." Basically I mean freezes from which there is no apparent recovery without manually rebooting by holding down the power button. The clock stops and no keys or clicks create any kind of response.

There are a few other variations as well. One is when the pages just freeze and the "page unresponsive" box starts to pop up, but the problem is that even that never loads completely enough for the option to shut down the problematic page to display. Another one is a bit different. In this scenario, when the screen goes to sleep after 10 minutes or so (or I just lock it myself), when the screen goes black, it's impossible to get it to respond again.

Regarding the first two variations at least (I don't see how it could apply to a completely black screen), I know with Windows there's Ctrl + Alt + Delete to kill problematic processes. Is there really no equivalent with Linux OS's? I like Linux much more overall, but this seems like kind of a black mark unless there's a better way of dealing with it. That is, I guess you could say that things usually go well, but when things go bad, they go really bad! Windows errors, so far at least, simply seem easier to recover from.

Any thoughts would obviously be appreciated! Thank you.

I use alt + f4 to stop prosses that are crashed but not closed but that may not work.

 

[js10]

Okay, let's see if I can respond to as many of the recent posts as possible in this one.

Fanboi, here's the output of the code you requested:

jordan@jordan-MS-7366:~$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev 1003100 0 1003100 0% /dev
tmpfs 206012 1300 204712 1% /run
/dev/sda5 38221364 24936940 11313176 69% /
tmpfs 1030060 111396 918664 11% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5120 4 5116 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 1030060 0 1030060 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 206012 24 205988 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sda1 449287640 393905124 55382516 88% /media/jordan/8030A99A30A99824
jordan@jordan-MS-7366:~$ free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 2060120 1074440 421040 123792 564640 644828
Swap: 1810040 819724 990316
jordan@jordan-MS-7366:~$


Condobloke, yours:

Linux Mint 19
Xfce 32-bit

KGIII, no, I'm not aware of any kind of updates (I didn't think Linux OS's really update automatically like Windows), but it would kind of make sense, as it just seems like something has changed. As for reinstalling, yeah, I'm at least starting to come to terms with that reality, although it might take a few more crashes to really force me to act. Aside from the (what I consider to be) difficulty of the initial installation process, while I could back up and restore things like my files, any installed software will be lost, right? It might seem insignificant, but I have things like the Kindle app that I don't think are really supposed to be compatible with Linux and I actually use a lot, and if I remember correctly, were a pain in the a** (not sure what the rules are here) to install and I also needed to pay someone to do. Actually, in general, I find installing things in Linux pretty tricky -- that's one of the few things I do NOT like about it, truth be told. So, that type of thing would cause me to hesitate. But, no doubt about it, having every session end with my having to manually reboot after some form of crash is hardly ideal, either.

 

[Condobloke]

32-bit

Run this in Terminal

lscpu

and

cat /proc/meminfo

 

[js10]

Done.

jordan@jordan-MS-7366:~$ lscpu
Architecture: i686
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
Socket(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 23
Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz
Stepping: 6
CPU MHz: 2999.615
BogoMIPS: 6000.18
Virtualization: VT-x
L1d cache: 32K
L1i cache: 32K
L2 cache: 6144K
Flags: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts cpuid aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority dtherm

 

[Condobloke]

cat /proc/meminfo

and the above please

 

[KGIII]

KGIII, no, I'm not aware of any kind of updates

When you get a minute...

Does this mean you've not updated your system? Linux has constant/continual updates. It just tends to do them in one place, unlike on an application-per-application basis like Windows does.

If it turns out that is the case (I'm going to hit the sack soon) someone should talk 'em through updating.

 

[Deleted member 108694]

To update open the terminal and run

sudo apt update

if it tells you have any type in

sudo apt upgrade y

 

[js10]

and the above please

Oh, sorry, didn't see that somehow. Here you go:

MemTotal: 2060120 kB
MemFree: 610264 kB
MemAvailable: 691780 kB
Buffers: 18352 kB
Cached: 349392 kB
SwapCached: 106072 kB
Active: 1021348 kB
Inactive: 273412 kB
Active(anon): 803748 kB
Inactive(anon): 218120 kB
Active(file): 217600 kB
Inactive(file): 55292 kB
Unevictable: 188 kB
Mlocked: 188 kB
HighTotal: 1187400 kB
HighFree: 149420 kB
LowTotal: 872720 kB
LowFree: 460844 kB
SwapTotal: 1810040 kB
SwapFree: 945592 kB
Dirty: 200 kB
Writeback: 0 kB
AnonPages: 882444 kB
Mapped: 290568 kB
Shmem: 94812 kB
Slab: 44644 kB
SReclaimable: 21380 kB
SUnreclaim: 23264 kB
KernelStack: 4704 kB
PageTables: 26540 kB
NFS_Unstable: 0 kB
Bounce: 0 kB
WritebackTmp: 0 kB
CommitLimit: 2840100 kB
Committed_AS: 9493820 kB
VmallocTotal: 122880 kB
VmallocUsed: 0 kB
VmallocChunk: 0 kB
AnonHugePages: 0 kB
ShmemHugePages: 0 kB
ShmemPmdMapped: 0 kB
CmaTotal: 0 kB
CmaFree: 0 kB
HugePages_Total: 0
HugePages_Free: 0
HugePages_Rsvd: 0
HugePages_Surp: 0
Hugepagesize: 2048 kB
DirectMap4k: 149496 kB
DirectMap2M: 759808 kB

 

[js10]

When you get a minute...

Does this mean you've not updated your system? Linux has constant/continual updates. It just tends to do them in one place, unlike on an application-per-application basis like Windows does.

If it turns out that is the case (I'm going to hit the sack soon) someone should talk 'em through updating.

Admittedly, no I have not. Again, it's just one of those things in which I feel that it's probably better just to keep my hands off of it (except for normal usage, of course). But, as can be seen here, maybe in the long run that's not true.

So I guess that means you want me to run the commands that Expiron typed above? It's that easy? And unlikely to go wrong?

 

[Condobloke]

Go for it.

It may take a while....be patient.

Do not use the pc while it is updating, etc

It may ask for a reboot when it has finished......Do that.

 

[Condobloke]

There is another way to update...

click on menu
type in Update......click on update manager

click on Refresh...(up top of that window)

when it has fin9shed listing the updates availabel......click ion install updates (beside refresh), enter your password.......and sit back

If it asks to install extras, click on yes.

 

[KGIII]

That's a long, long time to go without updates.

I don't know if this is going to fix anything, or break something else.

Linux needs updates, just like any OS. It just doesn't force them on you. I'm unfamiliar with modern Windows, but my observations back when were that Linux got *more* updates than Windows - largely 'cause the whole OS happily updates everything from the package manager. The kernel itself doesn't get all that many updates.

So, yeah, I hope you've now run those commands. I also hope your system boots when you're done.

 

[Condobloke]

OP was here 12 minutes ago.....his pc is alive if nothing else !

 

[KGIII]

his pc is alive if nothing else !

Or they're really mad and on a second device!

Under the circumstances, yeah... Update that thing! But, that was years worth of updates. I'm optimistic.

 

[Condobloke]

approx 3 years worth.

I reckon that could be a 2cup of coffee update