I’ve been trying to upgrade from Fedora 43 to 44, but I’m having difficulty.
When I try the usual method via Discover, it downloads the upgrade and I choose to reboot to install it. When rebooting, it gets to 14% before rebooting again to the normal login screen. I then get the following notification:
Failed to update 0 packages
package kernel-7.0.14-201.fc44.x86_64 cannot be verified and repo updates is GPG enabled: /var/cache/PackageKit/44/metadata/updates-44-x86_64/packages/kernel-7.0.14-201.fc44.x86_64.rpm could not be verified.
/var/cache/PackageKit/44/metadata/updates-44-x86_64/packages/kernel-7.0.14-201.fc44.x86_64.rpm: Verifying a signature using certificate 36F612DCF27F7D1A48A835E4DBFCF71C6D9F90A6 (Fedora (44)
There is an option to ‘repair system’, but when I click it I immediately see ‘repair failed’.
I found a discussion which was probably a similar issue here:
In that discussion they got around the problem using a command line method. Essentially:
I tried that as well (and a few basic variations on it based on other discussions I’ve seen.) There were no obvious error messages, but the result was essentially the same. i.e. the system rebooted to install the update, and momentarily reported that it was in the process of installing, but then rebooted again back to the usual login screen still on Fedora 43. I’m not sure how to see what the issue was with the command line attempt, but I assume it’s probably the same problem.
I thought maybe something (somehow) went wrong with the verification key, so I tried clean-rpm-gpg-pubkey, which removed the Fedora 44 key (since I’m still on 43, I suppose). When I then repeated dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=44 etc. it again asked to install the Fedora 44 (as it did on the first attempt), and I said yes. But the result was the same. So probably there’s nothing wrong with the key.
I’m not and expert on these things, and I don’t know what to try next. So I’d appreciate any advice on this.
We always recommend using the method shown here for version upgrades. The gui method of updating hides what is happening and does not display the messages so the user has no clue of the actual cause. Using dnf on the command line displays all messages for the user.
Regarding the recommended method that Jeff posted, I think that’s what I already did. Is that not what I described in my post? Obviously there is a lot more detail in the docs page, but I couldn’t see anything about how to handle my situation.
Regarding Vladislav’s suggestion of using distro-sync, I guess I can try that later today - but I’m a little reluctant from what I can tell it essentially says “upgrade whatever you can, and don’t worry about the bits that you can’t”. I’m not entirely sure where I’m meant to run that from. Like, if I just open a command prompt and type that, will the GUI stuff get in the way of the upgrade? Anyway, I guess I can just try it, and if I end up with a less functional system then I can try something else later.
Ah. I’d tried those but it didn’t work at first, so I assumed it wasn’t a thing in Fedora. (I could tell you why it didn’t work, but it’s not an important or interesting story.)
Anyway, I did the distro-sync thing, and it went pretty smoothly actually. After the first reboot I got a stack of error notification popups; but a couple more reboots and a sprinkling of commands from those post-upgrade instructions seems to have cleared it up.
So I guess that’s that! Thanks for the help. I’m apparently posting on Fedora 44 right now, with no pending updates and no error popups. The only thing I’m mildly disappointed about is that I never got to work out the cause of the original problem. I guess these systems have a heap of complex interrelated components, any of which could be broken in a variety of ways - so maybe the answer wouldn’t have been interesting anyway.