How to manually upgrade from OTA-3 to OTA-4

UniSuperBox

These steps will help you upgrade your device running Ubuntu Touch OTA-3 to OTA-4.

Please note that there are still apps which have not been rebuilt and packaged for the OpenStore on 16.04. It is a good idea to open the apps you need most at the OpenStore website and check whether or not a download is available for Xenial. Also make sure you have read the release announcement and are able to deal with the known issues.

With that, let's get started.

Get the UBports Installer by clicking "Install Ubuntu Touch" on this page. The device model listed doesn't matter at this point.
Start the UBports installer and follow the instructions to get to the "Ready to install!" page
Click "Change options" and select 16.04/stable as your channel. DO NOT CHECK WIPE. Click "Close".
Under "Install options", ensure that 16.04/stable is listed as your channel and Wipe is set to No.
Click "Install" to start the installation process. Follow the installer's prompts to complete the process.

After your phone goes through the "Installing Update" screen and reboots, you'll have Ubuntu Touch 16.04!

gnu-mobile

Would it also be possible to temporarily switch a device to the RC channel instead, and to switch back to stable later? Maybe after OTA-5 is released.

Lakotaubp

@gnu-mobile Have a look in system settings, Updates(3rd from bottom). Then update settings (very bottom of the page) then Channels. You should see RC and dev. Choose RC and go back to the updates page. It should be downloading.

UniSuperBox

To be clear, redirection of 15.04/rc and devel to 16.04 does not start until next Monday, the 3rd. Until then, switching channels like that will not upgrade you to 16.04

gnu-mobile

Ok, thank you very much for all your answers, so updating without having to install from another device should be possible next week. That's great.

Is it correct that going back to stable 16.04 OTA-5 should also work later (once released to the stable channel) while keeping the data partition untouched?

mihael

I have some problems running the installer from Ubuntu running on a virtual machine. I recently saw a post with instructions for system-image-cli command but now that post is deleted. So, I'm asking here: could this command run on the phone terminal upgrade a 15.04/stable to 16.04 stable?:

sudo system-image-cli -vvvv --switch ubports-touch/16.04/stable

advocatux

@mihael the correct command is sudo system-image-cli -vvvv --switch 16.04/stable

The -vvvv parameter is just in case you want a verbose output in your terminal, so you can skip it.

See http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/system-image-cli.1.html if you want to use other parameters. For example, if you want to wipe your device too.

You can run that command directly in your phone or entering in your phone from your computer using adb

mihael

@advocatux Great! Thanks! I'll try that... I put ubports-touch/16.04/stable and not only 16.04/stable because that was what I found among the channels that I got from running sudo system-image-cli --list-channels...

advocatux

@mihael the command I posted is tested and I know it works. Yours should work too but I preferred to post the proven method

LlamasJM

This command doesn't work for me. This is the message:

Exception occurred during update; see log file for details.

advocatux

@llamasjm what says the log? Can you paste it in https://paste.ubuntu.com/ ? Thank you

LlamasJM

I have made this in paste.ubuntu. I don't know if it's correct.

https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/Vq5MpkkZjw/

Really is a big error message...

advocatux

@llamasjm what is the exact UT version running in your phone?

Isolated-thinker

@unisuperbox said in How to manually upgrade from OTA-3 to OTA-4:

To be clear, redirection of 15.04/rc and devel to 16.04 does not start until next Monday, the 3rd. Until then, switching channels like that will not upgrade you to 16.04

Does this apply to all Ubuntu Touch devices, such as my OTO, or is this release on the 3rd for specific devices?

Lakotaubp

@isolated-thinker Yes this should cover all devices on OTA-3(15.04).

LlamasJM

All clear. I'm on OTA-3. Well, tomorrow I'll be at home, with my Ubuntu computer, and using UBports installer OTA-4 will be here without problem, for sure. Thanks!

Mika15

Hi everyone, I have a BQ Aquaris E5 with UBPorts OTA3, will I loose SMS, calls history and contacts if I upgrade to OTA4 ? Thanks.

advocatux

@mika15 it's always a good idea to make a backup but said that, you'll keep all your data if you don't check the wipe option

Mika15

@advocatux Thanks for the quick response! I will do a backup before upgrading using rsync over ssh is enough as it or some procedures are better ? Other question, If I'm not happy with OTA4, is easy to downgrade or do I have to forget ? Thanks!

advocatux

@mika15 you're welcome. You can backup the whole /home if you want peace of mind [*] but you only need to backup the data you want to keep really.

You have the obvious things like Documents, Music, etc, that's easy to find

In ~.local/share/evolution/ you'll find the addressbook, calendar, memos, and tasks DDBB.

~.local/share/history-service/history.sqlite for SMS and calls log.

If you're using Authenticator, you'll find the config file here .config/com.ubuntu.developer.mzanetti.ubuntu-authenticator/

Probably the easier way to downgrade is to use the installer, probably switching channels will work too though.

[*] Edit to explain that if you have a complete home backup, you can easily copy to your phone any bit you could need or you forgot the first time