After a few months I booted my Kde Neon Testing again last Sunday July 30 and let Discover download a lot of updates.
At reboot it started to install the downloaded updates but that finished way too quickly and the next automatic reboot led to a very small pointer on a black screen.
I booted in rescue mode and tried
pkcon refresh
pkcon -v update
but that failed with something like libpoppler-glib8 has unmet dependencies…
I booted again in rescue mode and tried “repair packages” which started the installation of the updates that were not installed yet.
Again a reboot and then kde gui was able to work again.
Nothing on Google had helped me, so the next time when updating fails I can look up my own message here on this forum.
In the past I have had a lot of these updating failures. I then always have to search for help with google: sometimes I quickly find a solution, other times I have to spend a whole night and try everything to fix it.
Until now I’ve been lucky and I could always make neon boot again.
Is it too much to ask for kde neon to have a robust updating mechanism that is foolproof?
You might consider disabling Offline Updates in System Settings, so it doesn’t to reboot into that special session to apply them.
I would also suggest updating more often than every few months, so that a whole passel of updates don’t stack up. But I know that this is not always feasible. Switching to a normal update process might alleviate this sort of thing, and at least give you error messages while still logged in to the desktop.
That is sort of hard on any type of system, and the vast number of software packages available, even before adding external sources seems to be getting harder to manage on everyone’s unique set of additions and modifications.
these last few updates have been fraught with dangers… and letting them stew for a bit before installing them can help avoid the worst of the yanking around.
but i’ve learned the hard way to examine what is going to be updated (looking for kernel images mostly) and to utilize the recovery menu options when the BlackSOD makes it’s appearance.
it’s also good to not let too much time pass because these updates can pile up and become a dependency nitemare if all done at once.
i tend to try and not put them off for more than a few days.