When xscreensaver/xlockmore isn't properly stopped, the upgrade leads to a broken system

It just happened to me on my other computer, during a REAL upgrade from Lubuntu 11.10 to 12.04
It is still sitting there in limbo until I figure this out and make a decision.
 I typed sudo killall xscreensaver
and it seemed to work, no error msg., but then I typed Start xscreensaver and restart xscreensaver all different ways and it says Unknown job: xscreensaver
and Unknown job:xlockmore .
I am wondering what will happen if I reboot it???
Will I have to try to fix it manually from a terminal, (boot to recovery) or get mad and re-install 11.10 from my disk? or what ?

It took Hours to do the upgrade too. Downloading it all...

The above line "The bug doesn't block the install process" sort of gives me hope , wish there were a sentence or so more of details though.
 I have a few other distro's I may go to, If I have to re-intall, but Maverick 10.10 was the Best OS I have Ever used, and have used Ubuntu since dapper Drake, It got steadily worse since 11.04 though...

There seems to be No provision to delete my comment here someone (admin) can please delete it if so desired.

Trying to update a ppc ubuntu install is nearly impossible. Update Manager didn't have the Software Sources, downloading the 12.04 iso and burning it to a CD half a day ago didn't work; I learned later because I chose update while upgrading but there are no sources for 12.04 ppc in the cdimages multiversii or anywhere else on this planet. I managed to start the process by saying "no" to updating while upgrading: the most important step since the install will 100% for sure fail due to the absence of sources. By then I'd copied the iso to a new directory as outlined in a Upgrading wiki so the it could emulate an alternate CD. "8 hours remaining' the progress bar estimated once the upgrade had 'downloaded' the info from the iso. 4 hours later I'm told that xscreensaver and xlockmore may lock users out if I don't "arrange for these programs to be restarted or stopped before continuing this upgrade"?? Neither can be started or stopped in a terminal. I have no idea what xlockmore is. In the middle of an upgrade can I delete them? How would I find them? The upgrade has already taken over 15 hours ( I made the mistake of doing something else after 8 hours at it, thinking it was finally going to upgrade, no it just stopped and waited for my full attention so I could answer some stupid question like do I want lxdm default which later is deleted anyway). After a full day of upgrading I may be locked out anyway? Bug is a good word for this upgrade experience and I have no idea whether disabling xscreensaver satisfies the either/or restart or stop instructions so why bother googling to find out what xlockmore has to do with anything.

The upgrade failed at about 95% (by progress bar), screen froze, had to be powered off and was unbootable after rescue resetting to boot with /sda11 as my / partition. I'd backed up my / partition but there were 17 partitions on my HD after a guided install; the old files in / are quite useless with an almost upgraded system. I have yet to upgrade successfully on 2 different dual-boot macs, this was either my 4th or 5th attempt in various 10.4 - 12.10 Ubuntu/Lubuntu upgrades/configurations. I learned not to keep anything 'valuable' on my hard drive but I did have a working system before this upgrade took 18 hours of hacking and guessing and I ended up with nothing. I can't help but think ppc architecture is currently un-upgradable. I have no way of knowing whether this bug was my downfall, xlockmore was not a conscious choice I made to install: in my screensaver preferences I had set my desktop never to lock, I'm assuming the option to lock after screensaver start is what xlockmore is. I had disabled xscreensaver after getting the warnings during upgrade to no avail. 12.04 won't be LTS forever, my approach will be to install 12.04 LTS on the machine I want to have stable and expect to start from scratch when I want a newer kernel.

Also effects 12.10 -> 13.04 amd64;

"One or more running instances of xscreensaver or xlockmore have been detected on this system. Because of incompatible library changes, the upgrade of the GNU libc library will leave you unable to authenticate to these programs. You should arrange for these programs to be restarted or stopped before continuing this upgrade, to avoid locking your users out of their current sessions."

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/966451

I just completed an Lubuntu 12.10 -> 13.04 i386 upgrade, but before beginning I opened the xscreensaver UI and set both Blank after and Cycle after to 300 minutes. Then this warning didn't appear.

Actual upgrade time with my connection varies from about 90 minutes to 120 minutes depending on the actual download speed - it's a shared connection.

So maybe during 13.10 dev we can look into disabling xscreensaver prior to beginning the upgrade process???

Just trying to be thorough here. Please refer to the attached screenshot.

What I've found over testing Lubuntu 12.10 -> 13.04 upgrades the past few days is that when that warning appears if you click on Forward the upgrade completes successfully, but if you freak out and click on the close button (X) in the upper right hand corner the upgrade fails. I was able to sort things out in a chroot, but it was sloppy and quite time consuming - not at all something most users would tolerate.

If I set the Blank after and Cycle after times to something beyond the maximum time required to complete the upgrade the warning does not even appear.

I'm trying to come up with a way to mention this in the release notes but I'm not that good with words :^(

This should likely show that it affects release-upgrader rather than ubiquity..

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Pasi,
Does this only affect the upgrade via Update Manager/Software Updater or using [ do-release-upgrade ] in the terminal and/or upgrading via live image?

It does not effect upgrades via live image. I've never tested using "do-release-upgrade" because I run no server installs.

It does appear running upgrades via "update-manager -d", "update-manager -d -c", and upgrades offered via GUI by the Update Manager/Software Updater when a new version is available.

I'll be glad to perform any additional testing requested, but please be specific about the desired testcase.

BTW I know I'm not Pasi, but with our shortened support cycle for interim releases I truly feel we need to fix any release upgrade bugs ASAP.

I'm not a dev in any stretch of the imagination but I think we need to look to see if xscreensaver or xlockmore are installed prior to beginning the dist-upgrade and then disable both before continuing to prevent confusion.

Where I said, "we need to look to see if xscreensaver or xlockmore are installed prior to beginning the dist-upgrade and then disable both before continuing to prevent confusion", I wish I'd said;

"ubuntu-release-upgrader needs to look to see if xscreensaver or xlockmore are installed before proceeding with the upgrade, and if installed they need to be disabled before the dist-upgrade proceeds in order to prevent confusion".

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Same happened to me on upgrade from Xubuntu 12.10 amd64 to 13.04.

But my screensaver was *disabled*. I don't see how this should happen.

I got this message:

"Cofiguring libc6

"One or more running instances of xscreensaver or xlockmore have been detected on this system. Because of incompatible library changes, the upgrade of the GNU libc library will leave you unable to authenticate to these programs. You should arrange for these programs to be restarted or stopped before continuing this upgrade, to avoid locking your users out of their current sessions."

I had been using xscreensaver but it has been disabled for some time. It does, however, appear to be running:

ps -ax | grep xscreensaver

1978 ? S 0:03 xscreensaver -no-splash

Shouldn't it be switched off?

Caleb,

this happens too when *do-release-upgrade* is used in a terminal. The here terminal was started from the GUI. The message is formatted in ASCII art.

The GUI dialog also occurs when uprading from Xubuntu 12.04.5 LTS (Precise Pangolin) to 14.04.1 (Trusty Tahr).

The dialog regarding xscreensaver/xmorelock just was shown to me when trying to upgrade from 20.04 to 21.10 (running do-release-upgrade in the shell). Upgrade is still running, keeping fingers crossed it will work properly.

As there is no information on how to properly disable xscreensaver/xmorelock, I find this message a bit unhelpful. To exaggerate, it reads like "The installation might go wrong and lock yourself out of the system. If you want to prevent that, then go find out by yourself how to do that. Good Luck!"