When upgrading choose maintainers version or default.

[porkfriedmike]

When using MX Updater (little green box in the panel) I'm sometimes asked to choose between maintainers version yes or default no. Is there a way to know if the maintainer is an MX dev & I should choose yes or stay with the default no. Was wondering if accepting yes might break something. Also if making a donation to MX is it split with antiX or are they separate funds. Thanks in advance.

[asqwerth]

If it's stuff like grub, lightdm (2 examples), the maintainer would be Debian, so the fresh config file that comes with the updates of those packages would be vanilla configs without the changes that MX devs [grub] or you [lightdm - you might have used the lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings tool to customise the login screen] have made.

Agreeing to overwrite with the fresh Debian config files means, for example, that the grub menu will list MX as Debian instead, and your login screen will lose the changes you made.

How to check?

1. Choose "D" to list the differences: a "+" next to a line means this is a newly added line, while a "-" means the proposed new config file has deleted that line from your existing config file. Spacebar scrolls down the list of differences (if longer than 1 page) and "q" returns you to the previous page where you have to answer Y or N to the question.

2. And of course, if you know you had made some changes to a particular program, and you are now being asked if you want to accept the developer's new config file, then you will know that choosing Y to remove all your changes.

[porkfriedmike]

Thank you asqwerth. I guess if I see anything that looks like it's something MX modified (in MX Tools or Tweaks) I'll just select No.

[Adrian]

Thank you asqwerth. I guess if I see anything that looks like it's something MX modified (in MX Tools or Tweaks) I'll just select No.

There's no hard and fast rule for that, if it were there would be no prompt it would do it automatically for you.

For MX Tools it's probably best to press Yes, because we are the ones who maintain and upgrade them, not Debian so if we change something in the configuration it was intended that way -- for example at some point I changed the format of the /etc/mx-snapshot.conf, it would not even work correctly if you didn't accept the change. But also the purpose of the prompt is if you changed something to the configuration file, if you performed a customization, the upgrade would erase that that why you get the prompt. But unfortunately, as I said in the beginning, there's no general rule "Yes" for all the cases, or "No" for all the cases. In any case, for MX Tools usually you should probably say "Yes" -- or if you customized that specific .conf file make sure you save or redo that specific customization.

[porkfriedmike]

Hi Adrian, I worded my reply backwards. Yes if it looks like an MX change & No if it's not.

[Ironfighter]

I have had a similar experience this morning. I selected D and this is what I got. I am a bit concerned that it might be connected to an external hardware set up that I cooked recently

https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php ... 40#p695040

I decided not to install anything until I found out what to do so any help would be appreciated.

Code: Select all

[/co  case ${GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR} in
-    Ubuntu|Kubuntu|MX*)
+    Ubuntu|Kubuntu)
       OS="${GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR}"
       ;;
     *)
-      OS="${GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR}"
+      OS="${GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR} GNU/Linux"
       ;;
   esac
   CLASS="--class $(echo ${GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR} | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' | cut -d' ' -f1|LC_ALL=C sed 's,[^[:alnum:]_],_,g') ${CLASS}"
@@ -368,7 +368,15 @@
     fi
   fi
 
-  if [ "x$is_top_level" = xtrue ] && [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU}" != xy ]; then
+  # The GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU option used to be different than others since it was
+  # mentioned in the documentation that has to be set to 'y' instead of 'true' to
+  # enable it. This caused a lot of confusion to users that set the option to 'y',
+  # 'yes' or 'true'. This was fixed but all of these values must be supported now.
+  if [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU}" = xyes ] || [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU}" = xy ]; then
+    GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU="true"
+  fi
+
+  if [ "x$is_top_level" = xtrue ] && [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU}" != xtrue ]; then
     linux_entry "${OS}" "${version}" simple \
     "${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX} ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT}"
 

Configuration file '/etc/grub.d/10_linux'
 ==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
 ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
   What would you like to do about it ?  Your options are:
    Y or I  : install the package maintainer's version
    N or O  : keep your currently-installed version
      D     : show the differences between the versions
      Z     : start a shell to examine the situation
 The default action is to keep your current version.
*** 10_linux (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ?  
de]

[Mauser]

I learned the hard way on a previous version of MX Linux that when you get an update asking those kinds of questions that it broke the installation on my laptop computer but it worked fine on my desktop computer. When my computer is working fine, I always select N for no from now on to avoid any possible problems.

[pianokeyjoe]

I learned the hard way on a previous version of MX Linux that when you get an update asking those kinds of questions that it broke the installation on my laptop computer but it worked fine on my desktop computer. When my computer is working fine, I always select N for no from now on to avoid any possible problems.

Ahhh! Seems I was not the only one! Recent updates to system files, namely grub broke my system installation to become unbootable when I chose the default and maintainers config files rather than the LOCAL config files. I had to boot a live usb and do a MX boot fix to reinstall grub and get my system back up but I now have a default Debian 10 grub menu and not the MX boot menu with it's extra features. I do not know how to restore that. In 2022, I still do not know how to avoid all this issue and seems many others are having the same issue so what to do? Do we KEEP local config files and keep local installed grub even though the system is trying to update or upgrade things including grub? SO do we keep the old system files even though the update/upgrade system is trying to , well, update/upgrade the Linux OS?

[Adrian]

Do we KEEP local config files

See this: https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php ... 39#p695139

[Mauser]

I learned the hard way on a previous version of MX Linux that when you get an update asking those kinds of questions that it broke the installation on my laptop computer but it worked fine on my desktop computer. When my computer is working fine, I always select N for no from now on to avoid any possible problems.

Ahhh! Seems I was not the only one! Recent updates to system files, namely grub broke my system installation to become unbootable when I chose the default and maintainers config files rather than the LOCAL config files. I had to boot a live usb and do a MX boot fix to reinstall grub and get my system back up but I now have a default Debian 10 grub menu and not the MX boot menu with it's extra features. I do not know how to restore that. In 2022, I still do not know how to avoid all this issue and seems many others are having the same issue so what to do? Do we KEEP local config files and keep local installed grub even though the system is trying to update or upgrade things including grub? SO do we keep the old system files even though the update/upgrade system is trying to , well, update/upgrade the Linux OS?

The way to avoid this issue is by selecting N for no when every to see an update like that. I had this happen to me on MX-19. This time I didn't make that mistake on this update. I don't recall what had to be done to fix it if you have your installation encrypted. I did it the easy way for me since I didn't have much on my laptop and re-installed MX Linux because I encrypted my installation.