X crashes while upgrading fglrx from Jaunty to Karmic using update-manager

Thanks for your bugreport.

Do you have the Xorg.0.log from the upgrade? If it turns out to be a general problem its very serious.

Sorry, forgot to save that log file.

I don't like to speculate, but what I believe may have happened is that the screen saver (OpenGL based) started at some point after the xorg-driver-fglrx package was unpacked (and libGL replaced) causing some communication "disagreement" between the GL library and the driver, and that eventually crashed the Xserver.

This is the first report i've seen/heard of this, but I think that speculation seems pretty sound. It would likely have the potential to break -nvidia too, so I think update-manager should inhibit screensaver if it doesn't already.

Thanks for the followup - I added code now that inhibits the screensaver. I would love to have someone trying the upgrade again with fglrx to check that it works well with the screensaver inhibit fix.

This bug was fixed in the package update-manager - 1:0.126

---------------
update-manager (1:0.126) karmic; urgency=low

  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgrade.cfg:
    - add gnome-app-install to the ForcedObsoletes
  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgrade.cfg.hardy:
    - add ability to upgrade from hardy to karmic (as asked for
      by Jonathan Riddell)
  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeQuirks.py:
    - add quirk handler to mark the dependencies of
      language-support-translations-* as manual on upgrade

      The language-support-translations- packages are removed in
      karmic and would otherwise be marked as auto-removable.
      (LP: #439296)
    - convert PASS value from 1 to 0 for ntfs entries in
      /etc/fstab (LP: #441242) and add tests for it
    - put 386 to generic transition code here and decouple from
      the kernel selection
    - inhibit gnome-screensaver once the upgrade started
      to avoid X crash (LP: #439594)
  * DistUpgrade/DistUpgradeCache.py:
    - workaround issues with kdesu when it drop the permission bits
      in a tmpdir (thanks to Jonathan Riddell)
    - fix base-installer kernel selection (LP: #441629)
    - fix log dir does not exist, create it (LP: #441959)
  * UpdateManager/backend/InstallBackendAptdaemon.py:
    - give up lock before running aptdaemon (LP: #445920)
  * po/
    - updated from launchpad (required as during a release upgrade
      we can't use langpacks)

 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Thu, 08 Oct 2009 17:45:25 +0200

[Nominated for lucid, but no evidence exists in bug report that it still affects lucid. A lucid compatible version of -fglrx was added just recently, so this needs retested.]

[This is an automatic notification.]

Hi Andreas,

This bug was reported against an earlier version of Ubuntu, can you
test if it still occurs on Lucid?

Please note we also provide technical support for older versions of
Ubuntu, but not in the bug tracker. Instead, to raise the issue through
normal support channels, please see:

    http://www.ubuntu.com/support

If you are the original reporter and can still reproduce the issue on
Lucid, please run the following command to refresh the report:

  apport-collect 439594

If you are not the original reporter, please file a new bug report, so
we can work with you as the original reporter instead (you can reference
bug 439594 in your report if you think it may be related):

  ubuntu-bug xorg

If by chance you can no longer reproduce the issue on Lucid or if you
feel it is no longer relevant, please mark the bug report 'Fix Released'
or 'Invalid' as appropriate, at the following URL:

  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/439594

I upgraded my primary system without seeing this particular issue, I don't rember if the screensaver started during the install or not. Anyway, the X server didn't crash during the installation. The fact that I didn't have any graphics after the reboot into Lucid is a different story (and unrelated to this bug).

I'm afraid I'm not willing to do any more testing since this would require me to make another physical installation (a VM doesn't cut it for obvious reasons) of Karmic and go through the trouble of upgrading again (and fixing the X configuration breakage, again).