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Right now I'm upgrading a fairly clean install of 16.04 to 18.04 and it seems to be stuck.

I mean, after some time into the upgrade it went on screen lock and I typed my username and password and it seems to be stuck saying: 'unlocking...'

No idea if this is due to the update still running hogging system resourcing or something else is going on.

I can switch with CtrlAlt+Fkeys but that just gives me black screens and impossible to tell if the upgrade is still running/finished of something terrible happened...

Any idea's? (cant log in with ssh because I haven't installed ssh server on this laptop)

Eranda Peiris
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geegee
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3 Answers3

38

I stumbled into the same issue: Upgrade from 16.04 to 18.04 (on Kubuntu). Screen automatically locked because I didn't use the PC. Entered password, screen is stuck. Switching to the text console - all screens dark. Switching back, mouse courser appears and is responsive, but everything else black.

I then realized:

  1. switching to text console with Ctrl+Alt+F1, the text console was not empty but just very dark. So I increased screen brightness on the laptop with the function keys.

  2. using top I saw that the upgrade probably still running (heavy load on dpkg).

  3. With sudo loginctl unlock-sessions I could unlock the screen savers. I learned this from this answer (full quote for convenience, I used the ):

sudo loginctl unlock-sessions if your system is using systemd. Note that the above will unlock ALL sessions no matter which user is running the screen saver.

If you only want to unlock your own session, just run loginctl unlock-session (no root required because it's your own session).

After that, I changed with Ctrl+Alt+F7 back to KDE and found myself back to the still running session and upgrade process.

Community
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Joma
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5

I am also still having this issue, but I found a workaround - Ctrl+Alt+F1 brings me to the normal login screen where I can enter my password and unlock the desktop. This method keeps the original session, so your browser, terminal and other apps are where you left them.

mtutty
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4

As mentioned in the comments, this problem can happen if your lockscreen is on a timeout. So before upgrading make sure you unset a timeout for lockscreen.

To fix a stuck upgrade: Powerdown the pc/laptop and reboot.

Most likely you will find yourself in a partially upgraded system.

In case if you see black screen on booting up, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 keys combination and it will take you to login prompt from where you can run below commands.

You can fix it with:

sudo dpkg --configure --pending
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt -f install
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
BeastOfCaerbannog
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geegee
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