today's update puzzle

[Juan R. de Silva]

On Tue, 27 May 2014 11:25:12 +0200, Oliver Grawert wrote:

> hi,
> Am Dienstag, den 27.05.2014, 01:44 +0000 schrieb Juan R. de Silva:
>> I
>> Luckily it did not take me long to find the reason and to fix it. My
>> kernel was upgraded form v. 3.13.0-24 to v. 3.13.0-27. But for some
>> weird reason the upgrade did not installed the headers for new linux
>> image.
> 
> make sure the linux-generic meta package is installed, this is essential
> for getting proper upgrades ... (it depends on two other metapackages
> that depend on the actual headers and immage ones). most likely you
> uninstalled the top level meta package at some point ...
> 
> ciao
> 	oli

Yours and Tom's suggestions are correct. With some weird variations as 
described below.

On the upgraded from 12.04 to 14.04 system neither linux-generic nor 
linux-headers-generic were installed, while linux-image-generic was. In 
addition the following were installed: linux-headers-generic-lts-quantal
and linux-image-generic-lts-quantal. I think the last 2 were responsible 
for the system still being offered the new kernel. But since linux-
headers-generic was not installed the headers for new kernel were not 
offered and not installed. Hence the trouble I experienced.

I guess I paid a tribute for the long story of this system in this case. 
This system was freshly installed back in Feisty. Since then it was 
upgraded from one release to another every 6 months up to Hardy. Then 
starting from Lucid and up to the last release I stuck to LTSs only again 
always upgrading. Surely some mess was introduced along the way.

But it also indicates on some bugs in Ubuntu upgrade/update/old kernel 
removal process since I've never removed neither linux-generic nor linux-
headers-generic manually. This actually is supported by the following 
funny finding in my FRESHLY INSTALLED system.

To my surprise I did found the all 3 files: linux-generic, linux-headers-
generic, and linux-image-generic were not installed too. So, I looked 
through dpkg log files and found the following funniest lines I've ever 
seen:

2014-05-14 12:11:57 status installed linux-generic:i386 3.13.0.24.29
2014-05-14 12:11:59 remove linux-generic:i386 3.13.0.24.29 <none>

The lines are presented in their actual log sequence.

The first is the last line in one of the recent system updates log. 
During that update linux-generic:i386 3.13.0.24.28 was upgraded to linux-
generic:i386 3.13.0.24.29 version. That is - the old version was removed 
and the new installed.

Why on the earth Ubuntu system update removed the newly installed file 
right after it had installed it, I have no idea. To me it is an obvious 
and very nasty bug. This is why my fresh installed system never was 
offered the lasted kernel. As soon as I reinstalled the file manually all 
others accompanied it with the latest kernel.

Thanks for suggestions and for rather long reading (if you've ever made 
it) :-)))