So I am letting the Update Manager do its thing the other day, and it kicks an error that looked a bit suspicious. Was saying something about a partial upgrade had failed and would I like to let it fix that. Well, I know for a fact I did NOT allow it to upgrade to 11.04 as I don't want to break everything I have working. and I did not think this was a true and valid message.
I didn't want the system to blindly upgrade since I play some games under Wine and have read there are problems with the new Ubuntu which I don't want to deal with just yet.
Instead of letting the updater try and fix something that might force an unwanted upgrade I first went looking and found blog and forum postings similar to this (Ubuntu#root), that talk of several steps to take including verifying each application and selectively allowing the updates to occur.
In a word YUCK!, much too difficult a process. (first letter of the exclaim may be adjust to suit taste)
Instead I went to the Ubuntu IRC channel (#ubuntu) and posted the question "What is this message about a partial upgrade all about anyway?"
Almost immediately I get a simple answer on how to fix my local package archive.
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
My understanding is this was a hands free, simple check of all my repository connections with a leaning towards repairing my local package database and upgrade a package only if it does not impact other packages.
Whatever it did, it did it quickly and without any hassle from me.
