How safe is the upgrade from 7.04 to 7.10?

[Liam Proven]

On 11/03/2008, Rashkae <ubuntu at tigershaunt.com> wrote:
> Liam Proven wrote:
>  > I have a fairly hacked-about with 7.04 system. I have nonstandard
>  > apps, like Pidgin from getdeb.net. I used Automatix to get multimedia
>  > support. Stuff like that.
>  >
>  > It's showing its age. When I boot, it drops into a bash shell as it
>  > starts the init process, saying that the error is that apt-get is not
>  > installed. I can't use ^d to exit this, but if I type "exit" and hit
>  > Return it continues booting normally. Yesterday, my 2nd monitor
>  > stopped working, and occasionally, the PC has started freezing.
>  >
>  > I have tried to install a 2nd system alongside my current one, but if
>  > I try to install from the desktop liveCD, the installer hangs when
>  > installing packages. The alternate CD crashes out with an error when
>  > installing packages.
>  >
>  > So I am a little reluctant to try to do an in-place upgrade on my only
>  > working OS!
>  >
>  > Is is possible and relatively straightforward to copy my root
>  > partition onto another volume, so that I have a backup copy, and then
>  > try upgrading one of them? This is already a multiboot PC:
>
>
> Generally speaking, yes, it's straightforward (relatively speaking)
>  However, and this is very very important, some of the symptoms you
>  described above are classic memory corruption/overheating Cpu type
>  problems.. As long as your pc is behaving this way undiagnosed, all bets
>  are off.  I wouldn't mess around with it until a technician has
>  identified and corrected the underlying illness.

I am a technician. I'm just putting off the chore of taking the
machine to bits and cleaning it again. :¬)

I got given this box as a dead PC a year ago. All it needed was a
really thorough clean: all its heatsinks were full of dust. I fear the
same has happened again, which is why it's occasionally freezing on
me.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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