Mint 17 - End of support coming soon

[wizardfromoz]

I made a few clones so I can " drive them like a rental " .... Ha !

Hey Socko, flesh that above line out a little, will you?

What does it involve, with what versions? Just looking to establish your State of the Nation to see what you have in reserve.

Cheers

Wiz

 

[Vrai]

I have an Acer laptop which was running Mint 18.3. Everything worked fine except for a couple little niggling issues. The primary one being a hypersensitive touchpad which I could not get to calm down. So I decided to install Mint 19 on it. The problem was I didn't want to lose all the settings and tweaks I had done. I thought I would try making a copy of /Home with all the dot hidden files & folders. I asked on the Linux Mint forums if that would cause issues but didn't really get a definitive answer. So I said 'what the heck - go for it!'. Installed 19, copied the Home folder over and everything worked like a charm In that instance I didn't have many applications to re-install.

Looking at doing the same thing on my desktop PC running 18.3 but have many, many applications installed which will probably have to be re-installed. Mostly games for the kids but lots of other applications also. Not looking forward to it. May just ride out 18.3 to EOL. But that's just putting off the pain for a while :/

Still trying to figure out a way to list just those applications I have installed and were not part of the original Mint installation.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Socko, when you get a chance, can you give us the output of

sudo stat -c "%U %G" /

?

Ta

Wiz

 

[Socket of Davis]

Socko, when you get a chance, can you give us the output of

sudo stat -c "%U %G" /

.....
Wiz

It gives :-

UNKNOWN UNKNOWN

 

[Socket of Davis]

Hey Socko, flesh that above line out a little, will you?

What does it involve, with what versions? Just looking to establish your State of the Nation to see what you have in reserve.

Cheers

Wiz

I made a few clones so I can " drive them like a rental "

I've had this plan to upgrade Mint 17.3 to 19 on the back burner , for a few months now
and I can't recall exactly how I made the clones , but it would have been either with
Clonezilla , from a USB stick , or
Gparted , by cutting-and-pasting the partitions that I wanted to a spare disk ....
.... which sometimes needs a little fettling , with a boot repair utility

On multiboot systems I might use the " Clone " function in Macrium Reflect

" drive them like a rental " just means treating them with the sort of careless disregard that some
folks have for rental vehicles ( or stolen ones for that matter ... )
..... casual vandalism would be a good description .....

 

[wizardfromoz]

UNKNOWN UNKNOWN

You see, that gives me an itchy feeling

I am on Robolinux (Debian-based) on the Dell at the moment, and that command gives me

root root

I'll just check Debian itself on the Toshiba next door.

... and yep,

root root

So at a guess, somehow the upgradings over the incremental versions to where you are has borked your privileges - perhaps to do with systemd being introduced with Mint 18.

You could see if you can get to root and fix that, by entering the following:

sudo su

#and if a # appears at the prompt, you are Root, then

chown root:root /

Then run the %age command again and see if you get

root root

If you do, reboot, and then see if you can upgrade.

Cheers

Wiz

 

[Socket of Davis]

You see, that gives me an itchy feeling

I am on Robolinux (Debian-based) on the Dell at the moment, and that command gives me

root root

I'll just check Debian itself on the Toshiba next door.

... and yep,

root root

So at a guess, somehow the upgradings over the incremental versions to where you are has borked your privileges - perhaps to do with systemd being introduced with Mint 18.

You could see if you can get to root and fix that, by entering the following:

sudo su

#and if a # appears at the prompt, you are Root, then

chown root:root /

Then run the %age command again and see if you get

root root

If you do, reboot, and then see if you can upgrade.

Cheers

Wiz

Thank you so much for the further Wizardry !

That "chown" was the key , and allowed the upgrades to run fully , from terminal .
I ran "apt upgrade" a couple of times , with updates and reboots in-between .
Now I have the GUI version of Update Manager back ..... a bonus !

Running "apt dist-upgrade" found even more stuff but I'm not sure why it would have made a difference .

Terminal windows now look normal and everything appears to be working , as far as I've got with testing .
The Virtualbox problems were fixed by removing the existing installation and re-installing with the latest
deb package from the website , and NOT from Mint's own package manager .
All of the VMs that were saved from Mint 17.3 appeared to work after that ..... another bonus !

I'm not sure I'd go down this route again though .
A fresh install of Mint 19 , even with the laborious manual installs of all my wanted apps would probably
have taken less time , all things considered ( especially with backups of my Home folder(s) on hand ) .

I guess it's useful to have a record of it on here , with details of the problems and fixes .

With End of Support coming to Mint 17.x , somebody may be thinking along the same lines as myself ,
and with a bit of luck , they may land here ...

Thanks again for the help Wizard ..... you're a star !

 

[wizardfromoz]

Thanks again for the help Wizard ..... you're a star !

Does that mean the cheque is in the mail?

Glad to be of service, and yes, I subscribe to "pay it forward", so others can benefit.

Hard yakka, sometimes, problem-solving, but rewarding when you luck in.

Cheers and enjoy

Wizard

 

[Socket of Davis]

......
I am on Robolinux (Debian-based) on the Dell at the moment
......

Folks in recovery from a distro-hopping problem should not be encouraged you know ...

You've got me started on Robolinux now !



PS - are there any more icons around , apart from the rather tired default set , that come
with the forum software ?

I always liked the cactus and tumbleweed ones ..... for use when a thread I've started has been
of no interest to anybody ( perhaps not even me ! ) .

And it's also a sneaky way to give it a little bump ....

 

[wizardfromoz]

Folks in recovery from a distro-hopping problem should not be encouraged you know ...

You've got me started on Robolinux now !

Mate if you try to keep up with me, you'll go cross-eyed when the wind changes, remember what your Mother taught you about pulling faces.

PS - are there any more icons around , apart from the rather tired default set , that come
with the forum software ?

Naah, even Mods don't get any more, and we're supposed to be special (well, I'm special, la-la-la).

You could put something in writing to our most excellent Administrator, @Rob , and he'll take a look at it around 2025. When he finds time.

Brian and I just steal extra ones off the Net.

Like his

... which I've sort of shotgunned as well, and my

... which I use when someone solves their own problem. We could gimp a few and make them available in General?

Cheers

Wiz

 

[Condobloke]

@Rob adding more icons/emojis etc etc...????!!!!~!

 

[Bayou Bengal]

I have found that Bitmoji is pretty good for smiley icons, although they tend to be a little on the large side. I use Gimp to down size and then save them on Imjur. Just post like a regular picture after that.

 

[TechnoJunky]

I used Mint for several years on an old rig I had. I did love it. Once they implemented the upgrade utility I used it and didn't have any issues with it. But what I'd suggest for anyone that wants to ensure their new OS has all the same applications and configurations is to do 2 things. 1) create a persistent home drive partition. This way your settings remain even when you have to do a new install or swap distros. 2) create an install script and save it in your home drive. Update it as you install more apps that you want to ensure you keep. Then when you need to do a new or clean install of your favorite distro, run the script and bing bang boom, you have all your favorite apps with all your previous settings all configured and ready to go. I've been using Linux and jumping distros since 2007 (Fedora Core 7). And I don't mind doing a clean install because I don't need to do anything other than what I explained above. Linux distros and versions are like girls or boys depending on your preferance. There's things to love about all of them. Don't get too hung up about your love for 1, play the field .
FYI, you may need to edit the install script based on the distro, like jumping from Fedora to Ubuntu wouldn't work with the exact same script.

 

[Condobloke]

@TechnoJunky ...would you consider typing up a "Sticky"...a 'how to do it'......on that very topic, for Linux Mint ?

1 how to create a persistent home partition
2 how to create an install script
3 how to update that script as you add/install more apps
4 how to edit the initial install script to cope with different distros

?

 

[TechnoJunky]

I'd be honored to @Condobloke. I'm going on vacation next week, so it won't be till after then, but after that I'll hop right on it.

 

[Condobloke]

 

[wizardfromoz]

...but after that I'll hop right on it.

Sing out when you are ready, I can make a Sticky of it, likely in General Linux.

Avagudweegend all

Wizard

 

[Socket of Davis]

I used Mint for several years on an old rig I had. I did love it. Once they implemented the upgrade utility I used it and didn't have any issues with it. But what I'd suggest for anyone that wants to ensure their new OS has all the same applications and configurations is to do 2 things. 1) create a persistent home drive partition. This way your settings remain even when you have to do a new install or swap distros. 2) create an install script and save it in your home drive. Update it as you install more apps that you want to ensure you keep. Then when you need to do a new or clean install of your favorite distro, run the script and bing bang boom, you have all your favorite apps with all your previous settings all configured and ready to go. I've been using Linux and jumping distros since 2007 (Fedora Core 7). And I don't mind doing a clean install because I don't need to do anything other than what I explained above. Linux distros and versions are like girls or boys depending on your preferance. There's things to love about all of them. Don't get too hung up about your love for 1, play the field .
FYI, you may need to edit the install script based on the distro, like jumping from Fedora to Ubuntu wouldn't work with the exact same script.

That sounds like a superb plan !

I've still got a spare Mint 17.3 clone , so I'm up for testing your method anytime you're ready .....

Some posts here show how I've already tried to go about things ..... the hard way ......
What I have ended up with is a reasonably fast booting and stable Mint 19.0 system with all of my
transplanted apps and my configs for them , and the same for system settings and preferences .
But it still feels a little raggedy around the edges ( if that makes sense ) .

All of this aggravation came from me deciding NOT to do a fresh install of Mint 19 onto a spare HDD ,
and then installing all of my desired apps one-by-one , and set them up again ,
and do the same for the system settings , preferences etc. ( again )

That's my worst case scenario .... so I'm game for anything else on offer !

My goal has always been to get a stable and familiar OS , in a form that will give me many years of flawless use ,
without any drama or major problems cropping up , just like Mint 17.3 ..... and in fairness to MS , the same for W7 .

Thanks for your post !

 

[Condobloke]

@TechnoJunky ....how's that
1 how to create a persistent home partition
2 how to create an install script
3 how to update that script as you add/install more apps
4 how to edit the initial install script to cope with different distros

....coming along ?.....any progress ?....or did I miss it ?

 

[TechnoJunky]

I started it but got side tracked and didn't return. I will get that wrapped up this week and post it.