How to upgrade Mint 6 Felicia to Mint 7 Gloria

Warnings:

  • This upgrade path is for the Main Edition only, from a Mint 6 Felicia to a Mint 7 Gloria system.
  • There is no guarantee that it will work for you. In fact this is quite a risky process. If you’re experienced and if you know how to troubleshoot and solve common Linux problems (in particular X11, kernel modules and APT problems) then you’re probably OK. If you’re a novice user we recommend you perform a fresh installation of Linux Mint 7 instead.
  • You should make backups of all your data before upgrading.

Upgrading graphically (easier):

  • Open a terminal and type the following commands: “apt update” and “apt install mintupgrader-felicia-main”
  • Open mintMenu and run “Menu->Administration->Upgrade to Linux Mint 7”
  • Follow the instructions. Choose the default options. Ignore errors (in particular GPG and gtk2-engines-aurora errors).

Upgrading from the command line (faster, safer):

Open a terminal and type the following commands:

  • gksu gedit /etc/apt/sources.list (Change all occurrences of “felicia” to “gloria”, and all occurences of “intrepid” to “jaunty” then save the file and close the editor)
  • apt update
  • apt remove mintassistant
  • apt install linuxmint-keyring
  • apt update
  • apt install mint-info-main (choose “Y” or “I” to install the package maintainer’s version)
  • apt install mint-meta-main(choose “Y” or “I” to install the package maintainer’s version)

In the terminal, repeat the following commands until both show no upgrades available:

  • apt upgrade
  • apt dist-upgrade

Then type the following commands:

  • apt install mint-meta-main
  • sudo rm -rf /boot/gfxmenu/default.message
  • sudo ln -s /boot/gfxmenu/linuxmint.message /boot/gfxmenu/default.message

Finally, open “Login Window” from the menu, click on the “Local” tab and choose the Arc-Wise theme. (If after rebooting you get an error about the theme at the login prompt, repeat this step.)

To get GDM to play the default Linux Mint sound, open “Login Window”, click on the “Accessibility” tab, and set the sound for “Login screen ready” to “/usr/share/sounds/linuxmint-gdm.wav”.

144 comments

  1. Our experience with people who upgraded from Mint 5 to Mint 6 was that roughly 50% of them failed. In particular, if you’re using the ATI or nVidia drivers you’re likely to end up with a command prompt and broken graphical display. Of course if you’re experienced with Linux this wouldn’t be a problem for you.. you’d just remove your /etc/X11/xorg.conf, reinstall the proper and newer nvidia driver and take it from there.. and if your sound or even your Wifi devices stopped working you’d fix that as well….

    … what I’m trying to say here, is that this upgrade path is tested and it works well, but upgrading from one base to another is still very risky, and you should feel lucky if after you’re done, everything works as it used to.

    If you’re new to this, please hear me when I say it: Perform a fresh install. We’ve made Linux relatively easy to install and to work with, but upgrading from one package base to another is full of unexpected risks.

    Good luck, and don’t hesitate to use the forums if you need some help.

  2. Why is updating Linux mint so risky compared to Ubuntu? or is it that it’s not? but it just seems that way ^_^

  3. Upgrading always is risky as Clim said, i think if you have important things(data, documents ….) in your Felicia, is better to make a backup to your home directory, remove felicia and install a fresh Gloria, then restore your home directory , later you can install your favorite softwares.

    This way you will not risk to loose your data if something diden`t work good.

  4. If I knew upgrading to a new version of linux Mint was a risky process, Ive would have sticked with Ubuntu. This is just ridiculous!

  5. I installed this without any issues except for one which was resolved through rebooting and going through safe mode.

    Thanks for the great work Linux Team! 🙂

  6. I have done, now I have an upgraded version of linuxmint from version 6 to version 7 gloria.
    it works 100% no problems at all, very happy now

  7. What a ballanced, perfect and friendly way to advice people!
    I really mean it.
    For me this is one more reason to stay with Mint.
    I experienced this very very differently elsewhere.
    Indeed great work!

  8. Works perfect:D
    I get a few errors during updating, but it al seems to work fine.

    Congrats Mint Team!
    The best distro available at the moment.

  9. Not that I would ever do it (because I always prefer clean installs) but is it even a possibility to update from v5 to v7 (or v5 to v6 then to v7)?

  10. I had following error during the install:

    W: GPG error: http://packages.linuxmint.com gloria Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 3EE67F3D0FF405B2

    It says that I have no public key for the gloria repository.

  11. Funny me3x, I could sworn it said

    Ignore errors (in particular GPG and gtk2-engines-aurora errors).

    🙂

  12. to me3x:

    This isn’t no an error. It’s simply a ‘warning’. It’s no relevant for finish okey your upgrade.

    Regards.

  13. @metamorphousthe: I have just finished my Elyssa-to-Felicia upgrade successfully on an old notebook I have at hand (Pentium III @ 550 MHz, 256 MB RAM, chipset Intel 440BX, video ATI Rage Mobility).

    I was too lazy to write a Felicia boot disk and used the old v5 one because Gloria kept failing me for hours and after I installed it… it just didn’t work. Now I have a successful upgrade to v6 but I’m still a bit afraid of issues with the next step. However, this laptop is someone else’s and there’s no rush to deliver it tomorrow so I will try my luck and hope the upgrade will do what the install couldn’t. Wish me luck! I’ll get back after my upgrade to v7. Oh boy… 😐

  14. @me3x: perhaps you missed this stage:
    apt install linuxmint-keyring
    It’s not a very important error anyway, your system should work fine without it.

  15. Hi,

    Just two little notes:

    – it’s an i386 package. That’s on purpose so you can’t upgrade the x64 edition (because it’s basically not ready yet).

    – It’s not more risky than upgrading Ubuntu. Upgrading Ubuntu IS risky as well, just because their upgrade tool makes it look trivial doesn’t mean it’s safe, far from that. The main problems have to do with the difference in hardware support between one release and another (mostly because of the kernel and the attached modules and drivers).

  16. My Linux mint 6 stopped working…i mean..after the boot screen, i see something like it has a huge resolution that my monitor doesn;t support…and it;s all like colored lines.and it freezes…i tried to delete xorg.conf but it won’t let me…it says it;s read only, i booted with init=/bin/bash…help?

  17. Thanks for the advice!!! Great job Clem!!!!
    Upgrading right now (I have a really slow connection though)

  18. Just want to clarify…

    In the terminal, repeat the following commands until both show no upgrades available:

    * apt upgrade
    * apt dist-upgrade

    Does this mean that apt upgrade must be repeated until completed and then dist-upgrade repeated until complete? Or does it mean that both commands need to be issued and repeated? I’m assuming the former, but it’s somewhat ambiguous 😉 Also the first install of mint-meta-main fails due to substantial dependency issues, but as I see it is to be installed after the upgrade, I guess this is no biggie?

    Cheers

  19. Doing the upgrade process now. Lots of things to download over my slow connection. 🙂 So far, so good.

    Been using Mint 6 only for a week now and I must say I am amazed. Thanks Clem and the rest of the mint community! (And Ubunutu too for all the troubleshooting comments).

  20. Worked fine for me!!! Besides it didnt changed the default font and it doesn’t show the new notifications (the ubuntu jaunty’s one).
    Thanx, Clem and all the Mint team and have a nice summer vacation……..sorry, have a nice new job 🙂

  21. I am about to upgrade my Felicia laptop. I am more of a command line junky (most of the server I manage are Centos bases installs w/o X)so I will go that route.

    I have done several Ubuntu version upgrades that have bombed out half way through, several that have gone smoothly. Worst case is that it will take a couple of hours to get apt cleaned up and correct kernel modules.

    I switched from Ubuntu (been running since Hoary Hedgehog)about 6 months ago and really like what they have done. Don’t do much distro hopping these days but have also been keeping my eye on Moon OS (I like E17 but dev has been painfully slow).

  22. Just got done with the upgrade, used the graphical tool for the heck of it. Most everything seems to have worked, however I did run into a few spots where there were dialogs in the console (cups, gdm, pulse, one of the other sound packages, and perhaps one or two other spots.) Just make sure you have the details console open when the software is installing.

    My nvidia drivers (173) seem to be behaving.

    So far, the only ‘problem’ I’ve encountered is that I seem to have gotten ubuntu’s gdm config or something and it’s failing looking for the human theme. I can log in just fine from gdm, however.

  23. Felicia to Gloria upgrade seems to have gone very smoothly on my Lenovo Ideapad S10. The only thing “broken” that I’ve found is the boot usplash. Get a black screen after the normal grub stuff, and upon Ctrl-F1, see the “uspash: No usable theme found for 800×600” error. This is irritating only because I have to enter a password for my encrypted drive, so boot does not proceed on its own. My /etc/usplash.conf contains:

    xres=1024
    yres=600

    I did a `strings /usr/lib/usplash/usplash-theme-mint.so | grep -i usplash_theme`, and no image with 1024×600 was found. Tried installing an ubuntu usplash theme artwork set that contained an image of the proper size, and did an `update-initramfs -u`, but still just get a blank screen. Think there may be more to issue than just the image size.

  24. other than flash suddenly acting a little wonky, my upgrade was painless. thanks for all the hard work!

  25. “If I knew upgrading to a new version of linux Mint was a risky process, Ive would have sticked with Ubuntu. This is just ridiculous!”

    @XuD, it’s risky even with Ubuntu. I think Clem was trying to make fair statements about what one should expect.

  26. I get the following error:
    E: Couldn’t find package mint-meta-main
    when I get to that step… I’m going to push on anyway, hope it isnt too critical?

  27. Q: I’ve got a separate home partition set up with mint 6. If I do a fresh install of 7 without formatting, will my data stick around? I’ll just lose the apps I’ve installed, right? (I promise, I’ll backup data either way… 🙂

  28. I get a blank screen with it saying it cannot apply my new “theme” and it cannot find /etc/dev on the fstab.. Any ideas how to fix this?

  29. That blank screen is at boot up right after the grub screen where the Splash screen should be. Thanks any help would be awesome

  30. I also have that public key issue and I couldn’t install mint-info-main:

    ————–
    /var/cache/apt/archives/mint-info-main_7.0.3_all.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
    ————–

    I even deleted that .deb file and downloaded it again but it didn’t work. I’ll get on with the rest. I hope I won’t destroy my fresh Mint 6. It’s been a long upgrade on this machine. 😛

  31. i have current a pentium 4 1.8 socket 478 and 512 rdram pc800 on a intel 850 with gforce 5200 video and load time is faster but the internet is a little more on the computer with browser resources so if you are just using for internet dont bother if you are tech like me and love multimedia then upgrade

  32. i dont know if this is appropriate but i have to ask should i build a amd phenom 2 am3 or am2 socket or should i build a dual core pentium 4 system

  33. I upgraded from Mint6 to mint7 on my old workhorse IBM T23 Thinkpad laptop. Because I like to run with sissors, I used the graphical interface to upgrade to Linux Mint 7 over my wireless connection. I am happy to say the upgrade installed like clockwork. You guys rock! Thanks so much. I have tried several linus distros over the past several years and Mint is my, hands down favourite.

  34. The command line install worked perfectly for me. The only weird thing was that Mint Tools thought it was the KDE version, but that was easily fixed.

    Great work, again. I love it, it’s so bloody fast.

  35. OK, almost everything worked after “apt upgrade”. Now onto the hard stuff.

    —-single-error-Mint5-upgraded-to-Mint6-trying-to-upgrade-toMint7—-
    /var/cache/apt/archives/gtk2-engines-aurora_1.5.1~pablo1-1mint1_i386.deb
    E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
    ———————————————————————-

  36. Solved my own problem. Appended “vga=771” to kernel args to change fb screen size from 640×480 to 800×600. All good after that.

    BTW – Forgot to say “thanks” to Clem and anyone else involved with dev on this project in my last post. Linux Mint rocks! Appreciate the hard work.

  37. 6-7 upgrade failed, but thats okay I keep the OS separate from my home files for this very reason. so doing a clean install.

    Will still give the upgrade a shot on my second Mint laptop and go from there.

  38. @kneekoo:
    Clem said:
    # Follow the instructions. Choose the default options. Ignore errors (in particular GPG and gtk2-engines-aurora errors).

  39. Answered my own question – repeatedly called apt upgrade until everything was OK (ignoring lots of errors as advised) – eventually everything updated. Then repeated apt dist-upgrade until everything OK.

    FYI, Glade-3, libgladeui-1-dev and anjuta were blocking the dist-upgrade, so I temporarily removed them, completed the dist-upgrade and remaining steps, then re-installed them. Job’s a good ‘un now, and I have a beautiful Gloria system 🙂 Even Flash now seems to be working (which seemed to crash lots under Felicia, which I had recently updated from Elyssa), so that’s a great bonus!

    Only niggle remaining is CompizConfig doesn’t seem to work as expected – compiz is running, I have the desktop cube, wobbly windows etc, but changes to the window effects make no difference. Small niggle which I couldn’t care much about.

    Hats off to Clem and the rest of the Linux Mint team for _the best_ Linux distribution I’ve had the good fortune to install. Thank you!

  40. @kneekoo
    Try to remove mint-info-universal before installing mint-info-main if you got errors. And don’t be afraid about warnings with aurora warnings. When your upgrader keeps going without changes done, kill it and continue from begining.
    Now, I can advise you, because I’ve already gone through that hell 😉
    To be serious, I would be happy to see easier way to upgrade Mint in a next versions. Have you thought about upgrading with liveCD or, better, liveUSB?

  41. why must every six monthes a new linux be released? this is so dumb for home users to have to upgrade to whole system just to have a newer openoffice. wouldn’t it be possible to make longer releases for a linux os, like 2 years, and then only update software which would also be updated on every windows or mac machine like firefox, openoffice, etc…

    seriously, this is the only reason why i switched to windows

    and no, rolling release is no solution

  42. @Craig

    Yes, data will stick around, just the apps will be lost. Still, don’t forget to mountyour /home partition in the installation process!

    As for me, upgrade didn’t work, so I’m writing this from the fresh install. Looks great, let’s see if it works the same way!
    Clam, thanks for this distro, it’s one of the tow that I use for a while now (along with zenwalk)

  43. Tough luck. After I rebooted Mint it behave just like my first Gloria CD install. It froze at:

    * Loading manual drivers…

    And above that line a whole bunch of other errors:

    udevd-event[1094]: ‘vol_id –export /dev/block/7:6’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1111]: ‘vol_id –export /dev/block/1:0’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1131]: ‘path_id /devices/virtual/block/ram11’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1131]: ‘vol_id –export /dev/block/1:11’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1151]: ‘path_id /devices/virtual/block/ram4’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1153]: ‘path_id /devices/virtual/block/ram5’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1151]: ‘vol_id –export /dev/block/1:4’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1153]: ‘vol_id –export /dev/block/1:5’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1158]: ‘path_id /devices/virtual/block/ram7’ abnormal exit
    udevd-event[1161]: ‘path_id /devices/virtual/block/ram8’ abnormal exit

    I might be the old chipset of the notebook, I don’t know… I am able to fix a range of issues in Linux but this looks like it’s over my head. Anyway, at least I’m not the only one in this situation. It’s a COMPAQ Armada E500 I’m having here and some other guy is experiencing about the same problem:

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7227635

    It is probably safe to warn people that old COMPAQ Armada notebooks are unable to work with the latest Ubuntu base. At least two E500 and one M700 are already in the bucket.

    ——————————
    However, luckily I had upgraded and not simply installed, I had at hand the old kernels in my boot list so I chose the Mint 6 kernel to boot and it worked. 😀 If there is one thing I could complain is the size of the welcome window, which is bigger than E500’s maximum resolution of 800×600. If the bottom menu wouldn’t be there it would fit but at least I can see helf the button and the radio box that I should uncheck to prevent it from showing on every restart. Well… it’s a good thing I found out it wasn’t Mint 7 but Jaunty’s kernel that messes things up.

    The only problem I had left is that using this on 800×600 I had no idea how to click OK to change the Login window settings because the window was larger than the resolution and the buttons were out of the screen somewhere. To anyone in this situation (because upgrading to v7 from the console would require a few extra settings), I recommend the following (simple) steps:

    1. Click on the General tab twice (just to be sure). The “General” text should now be highlighted.
    2. Press and HOLD the Shift key, then press the Tab key once. The “General” text is no longer highlighted, even if it’s content is still displayed. It’s OK. You can release the Shift key now.
    3. Step number 2 above moved the focus on the OK button of the window. Press ENTER to confirm any modifications you performed in the Login Window Preferences. That’s it.

    OK, the conclusions:
    1. The upgrade went well, but on COMPAQ Armada E500/M700 the new kernel (2.6.28-11-generic) crashes the system.
    2. Installing Linut Mint 7 or Ubuntu 9.04 FROM THE CD/DVD on notebooks such as the above will probably end up in a bunch of errors BUT if people install Linux Mint 6 or Ubuntu 8.10 and upgrade to the latest version they will be able to use the older kernel and the system should perform well.
    3. To overcome low resolution inconveniences you will have to perform some keyboard tricks but regular stuff should be overcome without too much pain.

    🙂 OK, I hope I didn’t get anyone bored with the details but someone might read this and find it useful. Thank you guys for Mint 7. 😉

  44. well, upgrading to 7 version taken about 3-4 hours (with a lot of bugs), and after restart I saw kernel panic 🙂

    I`ve backuped my files, kill all partitions, and made a new one reiserfs & swap

    and I was amazed!
    after install linux mint starts in native netbook resolution (on HP mini 2133 in mint 6 was only 640×480, but on mint 7 1280×960!!!!!!!!)
    thaaaaaaanks!!!! ^______________________________________^

    Linux Mint 7 the best 🙂 thanks, Clem & Mint team 🙂

  45. well, I decided to try upgrading this time around.
    the command line instructions worked great!
    thanks Clem 🙂

  46. Mint 7 upgrade complete and running on 2 of my laptops and so far not an issue in sight……..

  47. Followed the command line instructions and all went well! Great work by Clem and the team.

    Initial testing of the new “7” .. all working and well worth the upgrade. Thanks to everyone involved, definately the best distro available.

  48. stop complaining.. even in ubuntu there’s still a problem when you upgrade, just install the fresh one.

    good work clem and the team 🙂

  49. Just upgraded from Mint6 to 7, used graphical “easier” option, took a while going through all the steps, but installed on my Acer laptop without a problem! Thanks to Clem & the Team for a Great distro!

    Firefox desktop icons changed from the cute Globe to a more mundane page with yellow ribbon, anyway of getting the Globe icons back?

  50. Sorry for that :). I read “Ignore errors (in particular GPG and gtk2-engines-aurora errors).” later and I was not able to delete my message. Anyway I thought that ubuntu will not download any updates from unsigned repositories. Probably I was wrong, or some parameter forces it to ignore? …

  51. I like the part “repeat the following commands until both show no upgrades available” of the manual update :). It is not easy to resolve cross dependencies if you have bunch of software installed.

  52. My upgrade went mostly smoothly, but my menu thinks its the KDE Community edition. Any ideas on how to fix?

    Thanks for the hard work.

  53. I think I’ll do a clean install. I don’t have the skill to fight through all the potential error. Is there any way to backup my installed software and/or packages, or do I really have to reinstall everything?

  54. I upgraded this morning, and everything went smoothly and finished rather quickly. The only problem I have is that after the upgrade I cannot enable any of the desktop effects. These worked fine in 6 but no longer. It may just be a driver problem for my integrated Intel graphics.

  55. Hi–I really dig Minux Mint 6, but because I cant get it to work with my sound card, I thought I might try Mint 7.
    Fresh install–how do you do that? Do I just delete linux mint and do a new install of 7? Or do I just install on top of 6?
    Great work–I’ve tried several Linux distros, and this one is the best–I also have it on 2 other computers!
    Steve

  56. I’ve just used this upgrade steps and worked perfectly and in less than a hour was all done.
    1º download mint 7 iso
    2º backup
    3º burn the iso
    you can do 2º e 3º at the same time.
    4º reboot and Install the new mint 7 and reboot
    5º restore backups and favourite apps.
    done.

    As mentioned your backup is faster with a partition /home but burn a dvd or use a pen or external hdd is no pain too.

  57. I found “debfoster” very usefull.

    You can use dpkg to backup list of all installed software like this:

    dpkg –get-selections > /backup/installed-software.log

    then install with:

    dpkg –set-selections /backup/debfoster_keepers
    nano /backup/debfoster

    #remove the line saying “The following packages are on keeper list:” and save
    #backup your /backup/debfoster_keepers somwhere, and make fresh install

    dpkg –set-selections < /backup/installed-software.log
    dpkg deselect

  58. I found “debfoster” very useful.

    You can use dpkg to backup list of all installed software.

    dpkg –get-selections > /backup/installed-software.log

    Then install.

    dpkg –set-selections < /backup/installed-software.log
    dpkg deselect
    #(or apt-get dselect-upgrade)

    This will backup not only software you installed, but all packages with packages it depends on. Dependencies changes often, so this is a problem when you do distribution update.

  59. The solution is:

    apt-get install debfoster
    debfoster

    #answer all Y (or just hit enter – yes is default)

    sudo debfoster –show-keepers > /backup/debfoster_keepers
    nano /backup/debfoster

    #remove the line saying “The following packages are on keeper list:” and save
    #backup your /backup/debfoster_keepers somwhere, and make fresh install

    dpkg –set-selections < /backup/installed-software.log
    dpkg deselect

  60. After the success of upgrading my HP530 laptop yesterday, I thought I would do my Dell Dimension 4700 with Radeon X300 graphics card. ARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!

    Long story short – could not even get a login screen just garbled graphics – could not get in via recovery as now asks for a “maintenance password” which is not set. ARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!

    Apparently the ATI drivers are not compatible with the new xorg.

    Found a solution which may help someone. HOOOOORRRRRAAAAYYYY!!!!

    mount root partition

  61. sorry submitted by mistake!

    boot up with a live cd and open a terminal

    mount root partition (sda5 is my root partition yours is probably different) sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

    sudo chroot /mnt /bin/bash ****YOU ARE NOW ROOT IN YOUR SYSTEM – BE CAREFUL****

    sudo apt-get remove xorg-driver-fglrx this removes fglrx driver

    reboot and should be ok – well worked for me.

  62. Used the command line instructions and ignored the errors (just made sure all the upgrades had downloaded) and she started up fine with no errors at all – all my data and settings are still there. Only pity is that with the slow bandwidth I have, the downloads took about 24 hours…. Looks great though!

  63. Being fairly new to Linux (Mint 6) I am not too comfortable with upgrading Mint 6 to 7. I rather do a clean install. But that raises a question. Does Mint Backup back-up all data files including the data files and settings for the user installed software such as Opera, T-bird and OO.o v2?
    Thanks and great work Clem and Team. Clem, could you e-mail me privately at riversbooks@gmail.com. I wish to discus donations with you.

    Thanks
    Mike in Alaska

  64. old 2500+ Athlon XP and nVidia gfx card here. I used the manual update method and it went A-OK. Some errors and warnings but everything seems to be working.

    There was an error which seemed a bit critical about the nvidia module setup but the setup ran again in the console when I rebooted and everything went fine.

  65. Any upgrade directions or guidelines for those of us running Mint as an “installation” inside of XP?

  66. Upgrade sucessfully on my Asus G1S from 6 to 7 ^^
    Thanks from Portugal, for this wonderfull distro.

  67. Howdy Clem,

    I just decided to do a fresh install, because I’m working with EXT4 now, and it seemed to be just easier to start fresh.

    The upgrade from 5 to 6 through this method pegged me in the 50% that didn’t work, so I would be one of those who would advise a clean install.

    For those of you who it worked for, that’s pretty swell.

  68. Thanks for the upgrade tool! I upgraded from 5 to 6, which went very well. I had to install printer/scanner drivers again, but that was about the biggest issue.

    For the switch to 7, I decided to go with a regular install. I was wise enough a while back to create several partitions, including a dedicated /home partition. For this install, I saved /home but reformated everything else, and I have to say, the install went flawlessly. I highly recommend at least a separate /home partition to anyone doing a clean install. It makes future upgrades/installs much easier. I still have to install printer drivers again, but otherwise I am left with a new version of my favorite OS, and all the data/files I had before. Mint 7 detected my hardware flawlessly, and I love it so far!

  69. Thank you Clem.

    I just finished the upgrade. I ignored the errors, and everything is working fine so far.

  70. Thanks for the how to(s). i follow your steps and everything is working fine. there was some litte warnings, but i continue and gladly upgrading is success.

  71. Not that I do not recognize the good work by Clem; anyway, a fresh install means also a lot of addictional work spent in reconfiguring desktop, browser and all applications.

    Admittedly, Linux Mint is a great distro; but I’m not too happy that till now we have not a safe upgrade procedure…

  72. Upgraded successfully!

    There was an error with the graphics, but the system offered to just refresh the configuration. For some reason it was titled Ubuntu. After reboot I had to enable latest nVidia driver and after I was able to load my compiz configuration.

    Great work! Gloria rocks!

  73. Just checked out compiz advanced effects and features, all of them are working smoother and faster! Desktop wall, application switchers, everything!

    Wow!

  74. Over the years, having seen many distribution forum reports about problems encountered with upgrading rather than with a fresh install, I once again chose a fresh install for Gloria, which was easier than earlier version installs, mainly due to the new installer with its simpler yet far more informative time-zone map and improved installation partition editor.
    It all just keeps getting better, thanks to Clem and the team !

  75. I have never tried upgrading before. I usually do fresh install but this time I tried the guide above and viola! it worked without any problems! Thanks Clem!

  76. thks. Clem. Upgraded from Felicia to Gloria yesterday. It took about 3 hours but everything seems to be running! It’s a desktop PIII 1Ghz machine with 1.3GB RAM.

  77. I used the first (easiest method) and the upgrade proceeded, I ignored all error messages and now I am running Gloria, no problems…
    And I am a total newbie to Linux!
    I had no problems, wow!
    Maybe it’s also because I only installed Mint6 3 weeks ago and haven’t had time to fiddle with it much?

    either way, I Love Mint 7

  78. I thought it will be adventurous if I update via terminal. I encountered some errors when tried to upgrade mint-meta-main, I ignored the errors. when I reboot, I was greeted by the initramfs shell, it was telling that my root partition is not found. Looking for solutions to fix this……..

    Thanks to the team for this great distro………..

  79. Used the terminal method, worked flawlessly. About 1.2 GB to download.
    Thanks for developing 🙂 !

  80. Well, it worked for me, just had to reinstall Nvidia drivers and sort out a somewhat confused grub (the kind of thing that only happens on my machine). Ubuntu Jaunty just got minty and its awesome.

  81. hmmm… count me in the 50% that failed. Two things seem to have gone wrong, for some reason it installed mint-info-kde during the very first update and wouldn’t let me install mint-info-main. And the xorg drivers for my ATI card were not working.

    So after removing the xorg drivers I got some sort of minimalistic kde going on, or perhaps it just says it’s kde. Anywho, I’m installing mint-info-main and gnome via synaptic and removing mint-info-kde and crossing fingers and toes… 🙂

  82. I keep timing out on one connection trying to apt update. Just keeping at it, doing that step graphically once, and seeing what happens if I type it into the command line again. Other than that, all’s going fine.

  83. Tried to upgrade using the easy way, didn’t work (HP Pavilion dv9000, 2GB RAM, 320GB HDD, P4 dualcore, eh dunno, fast). Removed Felicia, installed Gloria, that worked perfect.

    As a Linux newbie (with plenty of windows upgrading/installing experience,), I don’t like this way very much. But I do like Mint a lot (both Felicia and Gloria), and I’m thinking about removing wondows completely. Linux Mint is by far the best distro for someone who’s looking for a good windows alternative.

    If I may suggest something for Mint H(elena?), please make it easier to upgrade for people like me (= halfway intelligent user).

    I love you guys, keep on the good work!

  84. Smooth update using both graphical and command line methods, two different machines. Thanks for the excellent work – – been a Mintie since Barbara.

  85. Just finished upgrading my Windows-host VirtualBox machine. Went reasonably well, had to reinstall Guest OS Additions to make all the graphics work.
    And a quick tip for those who want to reset all the theme related things completely to get the default, sweet Mint 7 look and feel: cd to your home folder and do this: rm -rf .gnome .gnome2 .gconf .gconfd .metacity. Then log out and back in.

  86. I have this problem : E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/hppt could not be found.
    E: The method driver /usr/lib/apt/methods/hppt could not be found.

    Do you know what the problem is anyone????

  87. After upgrading, I’m not able any more to open “Login Window” and “Hardware Drivers” even after re installing gdm and jockey-gtk…
    This is the only problems that i’ve got
    Thanks for all

  88. It’s very slow, and nothing works while upgrading, many of the applications on mintmenu just don’t launch.
    It’s taking hours just to do apt-get upgrade… Sometimes it says 10 hours, sometimes 1, sometimes 3…

  89. The problem was just the GRE version or something.
    Nice work there, takes a long while but I guess it’s worth it.

  90. hi, thanks for the tips. I have upgraded my mint 6 universal to mint 7 main graphically and it was fine, apart from the mint-keyring problem which i sorted out and the kernel x server not working. I switched to an older one, downloaded the latest nvidia driver and it worked fine.

    P.S I am only 11.

  91. I used the command line option to upgrade from 6 to 7. Following the instructions it took about 1.25hrs to download and install all the upgrades etc. All my apps appear to be working and all my data is safe.

    I had to muck about with the nvidia driver (reverted to 173 from 177 to get compiz working). Overall it went pretty smoothly.

    Thanks Clem and all the minty people

  92. Thank you, the upgrade went well.

    I think that the comment 107 from slacker is relevant. Although I know and to you and me it may seem obvious that the upgrade will be over the network and that the warning indicate that this is only for advanced users, I think that adding a warning would be helpful.

    For people with slow or intermittent connections or with limited time this may be a huge issue as the system can end up just half installed.

    Also advice that it is not a hands free install, that the installer will ask questions.

    I will later report a couple of issues with the new Mint but for now I will just enjoy it.

    Thank you for all this work!!

  93. Hello,

    The update (with command line) failed and the PC has been blocked as the ethernet connection broke during the update (during the apt dist-upgrade step).
    After reboot, a “beautiful” black screen and no way to recover. I was aware about the risk and a CD was already burnt as backup solution.
    A new install and everything works (and now I have a complete list of installed programs … for the next version with dpkg –get-selections > SW-list).
    Note : As my home dir is on a separate partition and thanks to the linux power, I recovered all my settings immediately. I recommend to really separate “/” and “Home”.

    Thanks for all your work

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  95. What are the advantages of upgrading versus a clean install? Will my installed apps still work? All my settings will remain the same? I have my home and all data on a separate partition.

    What is the worst case scenario if the upgrade goes wrong? Will GRUB still work so I can at least run Win XP?

    Thanks. I’m dying to install Gloria because it should fix the damned key repeat rate problem for external keyboards that can’t be fixed in Felicia. That problem is so annoying, I’ve avoided using my Mint install.

  96. Upgrading program turned off Internet connection in the midst of upgrading process and therefore steps after “Check that all updates were applied” (including that step) looked to be failed. I ran the program again after reboot but it seemed to do nothing.

    Nevertheless the system is working stable, father (not a computer professional at all) does not complain.

  97. @Gumby Worst comes to worst, you break mint and have to do a fresh install. Grub should still work, but if it doesn’t then a fresh mint install would fix it.
    ~Good luck

  98. I multi-boot several linux distros and WinXP. When updating any linux distro, I do the following as a must;

    1. I have created partitioning like this;
    – /boot (install grub on a non-hd0 drive, usually this partition)
    – /
    – /home (I rename my to )
    – /home//.cedega (so I don’t have to recreate, plus its huge)
    – /home//.wine (ditto)
    – /home//Downloads (lots of valuable files in here)
    – /archive
    2. I place /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst into /archive
    3. I replace ‘nvidia’ with ‘nv’ in my xorg.conf file and restart X (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace) to insure 2D is working properly.
    4. When I do a new install, I *do not* re-format the /home partition but I do create a “new” (same name as before). When I get all done, I can copy over the important parts of the fstab and menu.lst so that all of my other drives and OS’s are working properly without need of tweaking.
    5. I grab files from /home/ to place in /home/ as needed, also this makes a good reference for themes, what apps you had installed/preferred, settings, etc.

    Since I’m getting all new apps, I never really have any problems unless a new version of an app breaks something that was working before. In other words, this is a fresh install with important parts of the old install still around for reference until I get back up to speed. I went from Mint 4 to Mint 7 in one Sunday afternoon this way. What I especially appreciate is things like passwords and cookies being saved and around. 😀

  99. My references to /home/[user] didn’t show up, so to reiterate;

    – I rename [user] to [user2]
    – I don’t reformat /home, but I do create a new user called [user]
    – Now [user2] is available for me to bring over necessary files as needed, mail, bookmarks, cookies, passwords, original files, settings, themes, etc.

  100. after upgrading from 6 to 7, my desktop background stopped working .. weird .. i tried setting it in gnome-appearance-properties and in compizconfig settings manager (ccsm) and no dice .. any clues?
    p4

  101. im stupid .. fixed it .. it was in gconf /desktop/gnome/background/draw_background .. i wonder how that got turned off in the update ..

  102. Upgraded an older Dell laptop by terminal. Got some errors, so I rebooted into “netroot” (minimal with networking). Wifi not recognized, so I connected wired ethernet, and got a connection. After a failed upgrade — some broken packages — “apt-get install -f” and –fix-packages?, the dist-upgrade was successful. I expected that the Nvidia driver would have to be manually re-installed but the new automated processes did it for me.

    Two suggestions: First, I think the terminal method might work better by booting into netroot from the start. I had screen freezes when trying to stop gdm before dist-upgrade. I know it’s not part of the howto, but doing a dist-upgrade with X running scares me. Second, while “apt install …” works, it does not do command completion, and “apt-get” does.

  103. I’m a relative newbie, having joined Linux (via Mint 5) less than a year ago. Command line upgrade worked first time in less than 2 hours on my dual boot XP/Mint P4.

    Loving Gloria so far – If I can just connect to exchange server I can get rid of MS. Oh yes, may also need to convince the girlfriend – not sure which is easier!

  104. I upgraded via the command line successfully on my Emachines laptop. I was very lucky, because where I live there are frequent power and internet outages.

    A couple of things: when I restarted, I got a message: “There was an error loading the theme Human.” I don’t know what that’s about, but Mint is running fine.

    A window that opened the first time I ran Gloria said “Welcome to Mint. Linux Mint 7 Gloria — x64 edition.” Did the upgrade install the 64 bit version? I had the 32 bit version before, and the upgrade process didn’t offer me a choice. Are there any disadvantages to running the 64 bit? Does it perhaps use more memory or other system resources?

    The upgrade took about 4 or 5 hours — long enough that I figured it was taking as long as it would take to download the CD. Can you do an upgrade — rather than a fresh install — from the CD? It would have been nice to be able to do that, because then I could have downloaded the CD and had a Live CD, in case I needed it in future, and still had the advantages of upgrading with all my previous settings unchanged, rather than having to start from scratch with a fresh install.

  105. half the downloads failed to install. I got an error in the details:
    dpkg parse error in file /var/lib/dpkg/available
    near line 17418 package system-tools-backends
    field name (XML must be followed by a colon

    HELP please – urgent!!

  106. Hi,

    After issue the command: “apt install mint-meta-main” I get:

    > Build-dependencies could not be satisfied for the following packages:
    > mint-meta-main: Depends: sun-java6-plugin mais ne sera pas installé
    > E: Packages damaged

    And when I tried to install this package via Synaptic Package Manager I get when I try to install sun-java6-plugin:

    > Depends: sun-java6-bin (=6-13-1) but 6-13-1mint1 is to be installed

    What should I do now? I am afraid to reboot! grrrrr

    Thanks for the “faster and safer” way to upgrade!

  107. Command line upgrade successful with two issues:

    apt install mint-meta-main didn’t work the first time – skipped it

    dist-upgrade couldn’t find mintsystem_7.4.6_all.deb. Used wget and dpkg to download and install v7.4.7.

    Everything else ran as advertised

  108. Following this guide I have upgraded my x64 based Felicia to Gloria successfully.

    One comment only:
    apt install mint-meta-main did not work..

    Great work guys!

  109. Another success with command line upgrade!

    Had to install latest nvidia drivers but wasn’t difficult.

  110. Upgraded successfully!!! I used the graphical option. Took me 2.5 hours, and I am surprised by how smooth the process was. Congratulations for the job well done, and thank you very much. It has been a pleasure using Felicia, and I am sure that Gloria will raise the standards even higher.

  111. Updated from Felicia to Gloria via the graphical update tool, with some problems: 1) debconf required a few Yes/No keypresses (which makes hard to tell when the upgrade process needs attention) and 2) the network (wired ethernet) came down at some point after downloading mint-specific packages, at step 4, and required manual intervention (ifconfig down/up && dhclient) to continue.

    Keep up the fantastic work!!!!!

  112. After command line upgrade from Mint 6 32-bit to Mint 7, followed the instructions on this page, I have got a x64 bit Mint 7 system instead of 32-bit!? What is going on?

  113. Mint is a great distro. But there really needs to be an option to upgrade an existing installation via the ISO (Live CD) of the follow on version.

  114. After following the above procedure (but directly from Elyssa), I notice that the panel menu still says “Elyssa”.

    Thanks for posting this!
    ~jim

  115. Worked like a dream apart from the need to change the links for the login screen, as documented. What a fabulous os!

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