Crash by software update on new XPS 13

Similar problem happening to me as well. My initial set up didn't go as smoothly though. It crashed halfway through. The machine rebooted and put me into Unity, though, so I've been proceeding as if all is well.

Had the same exact thing happen to me. I'm slightly concerned that after I restarted and I ran the soft ware update again it said everything was up-to-date. I'm more inclined to think this is a false positive than the truth, any way to confirm?

I'm having the same problem. The update is hanging on "Configuring grub-efi-amd64." I tried force closing it, but then the system would not reboot and I had to restore the factory image. 

It's hanging on this step again. What should I do?

I also seem to have the same problem. I just received my new Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu, ran the software updater and it seems to be stuck at  "Configuring grub-efi-amd64. The Software Updater window is grayed out.

What do I do?

After waiting for more than an hour the problem seems to have resolved itself. I noticed that there was a compiler process  "cc1" constantly running while Software Updater was frozen . Maybe this software component needs to compile for an hour an a half to install?

I would recommend doing a clean install of Ubuntu 15.04. I had the same problem you were describing, but now everything works great.

was this issue ever solved?

any additional thoughts anyone?

i'm stuck at at configuring grub-efi-amd64

Okay, I believe I solved this problem just by sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get install grub-efi-amd64 before running the software updater.

after running these commands i was prompted to either overwrite my current cfg for grub or keep my old one.  i chose to overwrite and the update worked fine and then I ran the software updater with no trouble.

Just ran into this same problem! After getting stuck on the update I eventually attempted to reboot, at which point the kernal error screen came up and I was forced to power it off.

When I started it back up it wouldn't boot into Ubuntu and instead just stayed on the DELL logo, luckily you can restore it to the factory settings from here:

1) Press F12 on the DELL logo

2) When the BIOS comes up, select "Ubuntu" (under boot devices I believe)

3) From there you should see an option to restore it to factory settings, select that then follow the options and you can begin again.... this time without starting the fatal update :p

This has just happened to me today. Following some of the other thoughts in this thread, I've managed to retrieve the system without reinstalling.

I left the updater running for more than an hour (one reply here suggested that it cleared itself and that cc was running - this wasn't true in my situation).

I logged out (not reboot!!) to kill the updater which was stuck (I couldn't find a way of terminating it) and then logged in again.

Then from terminal, I ran:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get -f install

sudo update-grub

Then, heart in mouth, I rebooted. All came back to life.

I'm not sure if all those commands were necessary, but I tried to play safe and run everything I could think of that might help to repair any damage caused by quitting from the half-run update.

Also, I don't know if future updates will hang in the same way - this is the first time I've had a problem with any updates to the XPS13 with 15.04 Gnome edition.

Hope this helps someone!

Made my day! Thanks!

This appears to be a Dell BIOS problem.  i just experienced the same thing on a new factory-purchased Dell Inspiron 3451 with dedicated factory install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.  It encountered the same immediate update problem after initial start up - the updater stuck on installation of grub2-amd64.

After waiting for an hour or so with a grayed-out progress bar,  I forced quit and ran the updater again and a notification window said that updates were complete and the system required restart.  Unfortunately, the restart threw the machine into a looping kernel error terminal and I had to power down manually with the start button, and then button start again manually. This second start then loaded up the Grub Boot Loader screen which normally is used only on dual and multi-boot systems. I let that just run out to load Ubuntu (selection 1), and it did so. The software updater then said the system was up to date, but another restart did the same thing - a kernel error terminal, and another necessary power down and button restart.  

 THAT APPEARS TO BE THE PROBLEM, as the original Dell O.E.M. was set to bypass the grub screen altogether and go right to Ubuntu start-up since there is no other operating system installed other than Ubuntu 14.04.  Apparently the recent grub2-amd64 update overwrites that original bypass and seriously confuses the Dell BIOS boot.  I am messing around with finding a work-around, but it is not going well.  Project Sputnik needs to get that Dell "My Linux" updater functioning and get some fixes for this obvious Dell screw-up.  The system with a dedicated, Ubuntu only install needs a means of rejecting the grub boot loader updates. 

Problems like this are why Microsoft ditched Unix and went with the registry - it is much easier to find solutions with a registry rather than searching for a needle-in-a-haystack text file.