When a distro upgrade activity fails, the logs that are sent back to landscape don't help much.
For example, this is what I got back when such an activity failed for me:
fetched gpgv:/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/us.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_intrepid_Release.gpg (28.57/100) at 0b/s
fetched gpgv:/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/us.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_intrepid-updates_Release.gpg (63.64/100) at 0b/s
fetched http://ppa.launchpad.net/landscape/ppa/ubuntu/dists/intrepid/Release.gpg (81.25/100) at 0b/s
(...)
fetched bzip2:/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_jaunty-security_universe_binary-i386_Packages (100.00/100) at 1592kb/s
fetched bzip2:/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_jaunty-security_main_source_Sources (100.00/100) at 1592kb/s
fetched bzip2:/var/lib/apt/lists/partial/security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_jaunty-security_restricted_source_Sources (100.00/100) at 1592kb/s
Only the /var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log had the actual failure reason (a missing gpg key):
root@ip-10-244-14-230:/var/log/dist-upgrade# cat main.log |grep -v DEBUG
2010-01-05 14:07:02,483 INFO Using config files '['./DistUpgrade.cfg']'
2010-01-05 14:07:02,483 INFO release-upgrader version '0.111.8' started
2010-01-05 14:07:23,571 WARNING mirror check skipped, *overriden* via config
2010-01-05 14:07:23,616 INFO fixing components inconsistency from 'deb http://us.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main universe'
2010-01-05 14:07:23,617 INFO to new entry 'deb http://us.ec2.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main universe'
2010-01-05 14:07:23,617 INFO fixing components inconsistency from 'deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted'
2010-01-05 14:07:23,617 INFO to new entry 'deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu jaunty-security main restricted universe'
2010-01-05 14:07:51,161 WARNING No kernel: 'linux-image-xen'
2010-01-05 14:07:51,234 INFO no old nvidia driver installed, installing no new
2010-01-05 14:07:54,812 ERROR Unauthenticated packages found: 'landscape-client landscape-common'
2010-01-05 14:07:54,813 ERROR Error authenticating some packages It was not possible to authenticate some packages. This may be a transient network problem. You may want to try again later. See below for a list of unauthenticated packages. (landscape-client
landscape-common)
2010-01-05 14:07:54,814 ERROR view.abort called
I just tried another upgrade and it failed. The log attached to the landscape activity doesn't show any problem, but the /var/log/
2010-03-12 15:53:57,631 ERROR Not enough free disk space The upgrade is now aborted. The upgrade needs a total of 37.7M free space on disk '/boot'. Please free at least an additional 19.3M of disk space on '/boot'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean'. (None)
I'm raising this to Medium because really, without that main.log output, there is no way to even identify the problem using Landscape.