#What began as a discussion and a request for help is now being written into a guide. If you have additional suggestions or comments please continue to post them on this thread and I will attempt to keep this current.
Primary complaint(s) covered:
update/upgrade fails
too much to download at once
can't complete an update/upgrade
apt-get upgrade interrupted
apt-get update interrupted
Without a long explanation into the various apt-get commands I am going to generalize some functions and how they may affect those of us with less than ideal network connections, ie. 3G network cards, dial-up, limited download plans, etc.
sudo apt-get update
You will see reference to this all over the wiki and forums. This command is used to check your currently installed package versions against what is available from your list of repositories in the sources file. Think of this command as a way to verify you have the latest (and hopefully) the greatest LinuxMCE features running on your machine. This step is critical for future steps in the updating process. If your machine does not know what it needs to fetch it can't very well fetch it.
sudo apt-get upgrade
If you are reading this thread as a guide than this is more than likely the problem you are having. After a successful update fetch, your system now has a list of packages that it needs to go out to your repositories and download. The process by which it does this however may be causing you problems if there is a considerable amount of material to download. A apt-get upgrade command needs to download EVERY package before it will process and install them on your system. If at any point during your download your connection to the internet fails the entire process is abandoned and no upgrade occurs. There is a way around this and while not as quick and easy as using upgrade, it will update your system and gives you a verification step to know you have the latest (and hopefully) the greatest.
Open KDE desktop session
Open a terminal session
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
When prompted with the package list and total download size, select "N" for no
Create a new text document in ~/desktop/ name it anything you like or don't name it at all
Copy the list of files to download from your terminal window into the newly created text document
Now you need to be somewhat familiar with the size of various packages before you continue. This will take some time but in general the lmce-skins and pluto-skins packages can be quite large as can anything with reference to database or mce-diskless. The majority of remaining packages are fairly lightweight and can be downloaded on even the slowest connection.
sudo apt-get install <first package in your text document>
What you have just done is instructed your machine to only upgrade one package instead of everything all at once. If the download was successful then it installed needed dependencies and upgraded your system. To continue on you may wish to do several packages at once...
sudo apt-get install <first package> <second package> <third package> ...
To verify that you have in fact upgraded your system, once you have completed an install command you simply need to repeat the first steps of this guide.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Select N for no, and notice that the list of packages remaining to download is now reduced or empty.
The more experience you have with various packages you may wish to skip certain upgrades and do a copy-paste-edit-copy-paste method. To do this delete large packages from the text file you pasted into. Keep package names spaced as they were.
Copy the updated list of packages
Go back to your terminal session
sudo apt-get install <Ctrl + v>
I hope this guide is helpful to the few of us left suffering with slower internet connections. Post a reply or drop me a message with any problems you have using the instructions above.
#Original thread content left for the time beingI watched the apt-get update / apt-get upgrade failures on my core closely and have a question for the more experienced bash users. First my understanding of what these commands do.
sudo apt-get update: sudo as I understand it is "SuperUserDO" or root permission says do this command. Apt-get update, I understand to mean check repositories listed in my sources file and see what packages are newer than mine. I further take this to mean its not looking for things I am missing, just newer versions?
sudo apt-get upgrade: go out and get the items found by doing the update command. Download everything to make them work (addition dependancies, lib files, etc). Once all are downloaded, install and apply changes.
Please let me know if the above is accurate enough for what I am asking below.
After an update/upgrade command I show that I need roughly 500MB of downloaded items. I also see a list of the packages and am given a yes/no option to begin. The process once started goes for 150-200MB fetching this and that until it gets to a large item (80MB) or so. It hangs here for a moment and then spits 30 lines or so of failed to fetch. Nothing installed or upgraded that I can tell as it never got to that point.
If the above is also correct and if dropped connection or DL stumble kills the process, is there a command such as:
apt-get upgrade <single_package_name> ?
apt-get upgrade <100MB only> ?
I know I can do a sudo apt-get install <package_name> but I don't see where that checks the version like an update/upgrade would.
I realize I am showing my green here but there is a TON of things to understand if I don't have ideal hardware, Internet connection, etc or if I want to contribute and develop.
