Run sudo apt dist-upgrade -y right after an upgrade to the Kubuntu 24.04 beta on a semi production system.

This is right after the xz thing happened. Also while Ubuntu made the t64 migration (Replaced packages with a 32 time variable with a 64 bit one, the packages are renamed. E.g. lib2geom1.2.0 to lib2geom1.2.0t64)

Packages based on the compromised xz had been removed from the repositories, but I already had some newer ones installed which where dependent on them. Also they already wanted the packages with the t64 addition, which by now where nowhere present in the system.

So dist-upgrade did what it could to upgrade 5 packages and bring the system into a consistent state: It uninstalled half of the system including some somewhat essential packages.

I noticed one of them scrolling by and hit CTRL+C. Afterwards I had the choice of saving the data and restoring from a backup a few weeks ago, or to patch it up by hand. So I did the second and created transitional packages like an empty lib2geom1.2.0t64 which depends on lib2geom1.2.0 which was in the repositories back then. 20 of these later I could install packages to get the GUI somewhat working and now weeks later all the t64 migrations are back in the repos and the system is fully functional again :)

Lessons learned:

• Be very careful with dist-upgrade
• Manually trigger a backup before a release upgrade

In now upgrade with
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -yV && read -p "Flatpak Update? (yj/n): " choice && [[ $choice = [YyJj] ]] && sudo flatpak update --noninteractive
and equivs-build ( sudo apt install equivs) came in really handy in building the transitional packages fast.