@wizardling Shucks, I'm blushing here. But seriously no problem at all, just browsing the forum and saw your post and noticed you were using apt and was aware it sometimes can cause issues like this.
The "problem" is that Linux will do exactly what you tell it to do and if you aren't fully versed in exactly how things work it can cause problems. I honestly couldn't tell you why it works, other than it handles installation of packages and dependencies differently.

@buzz

Thanks - I finally got it figured out. I had been overlooking the files in sources.list.d/ and noticed that both collabora.list and raspi.list had wheezy listed. Changed them to jessie, re-ran the update/upgrade process and things started working - except sound. I also had to add dtparam=audio=on to my config.txt file for some reason, even though that had been fine previously without it.

Anyway, thanks again for the help working through this problem. <3 RetroPie.

@rsn8887 it was a non fatal error in this case. I prefer that over a force pull.

Related - see my reply, here:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/8091/noninteractive-installation-upgrades/7

@pjft yes, but once it freezes you can't do anything. I had it happen to me and once you get stuck on the same update line for a long time, nothing brings you back. You have to interrupt it before it freezes.

I have it it's the same. prob more safety things and bug fixes. all my apps seem to play fine.

@noamDA Just buy a Switch and move on...

@laephis glad it's sorted. Good to know some people upgrade ok from old versions :-)

@pjft Yeah, i will have to do some thinking on this one. I am glad it was something so simple and not something I missed while testing out all of the configurations! If you put the rom name into the gamelist the mail folder won't have any images/videos/metadata, so that won't work well either. The other thing I am going to look into is how to hide folders from the list. I have looked around threads and haven't come up with a solution. I am thinking of trying to see if there is a way to add the folders i don't want to see, like the bios folders, to the gamelist, and then tell the gamelist not to display that game/folder. Kind of like how you can # in the .txt files to turn things on and off. Any thoughts on that?

@BuZz Thank you

@demost A lot of stuff has changed - you will need to study new configs vs old etc.

@lurkout performance / familiarity. We don't use retroarch as a frontend, so there is less need for xmb. I'm quite happy leaving it with the boring old gui for now anyway - but users can switch if they want.

Yeah, went through there and didn't find it before 'cuz it was buried in Raspbian Tools. Was just coming back to say I found it. Thank you though! :)

wanted to add that when I launch the file-manager I am taken to the boot up screen with all the green ok's.

I haven't had any issues with updating. I have heard of sporadic issues with the dist-upgrade, but they have never affected me. Then again, I'm using the binaries and not really using any of the experimental stuff.

RetroPie will give you an LBS error trying to resize on boot with retropie 4.4 with berryboot. It will also not allow you to resize it from retropie raspi-config nor while you have retropie booted and using the command line.

If you are using berryboot with retropie you will need to reboot the pie and do this from berryboots terminal via the berry boot menu with ctrl + alt + F2. I was able to resize an image I took of a 16G SD card written to a 64G card and resize it to expand all available space to the SD.

Links~
https://raspberry-projects.com/pi/pi-operating-systems/raspbian/troubleshooting/expand-filesystem-issues
https://www.chrisnewland.com/resize-raspberry-pi-sd-card-partition-to-fill-32gb-card-from-a-running-raspberry-pi-245

I cannot take credit for this, but will link what helped me after I spent a few hours trying to figure it out. Back up your SD pay no attention to drive space numbers in the examples below.

Backup your SD card to an image file first!

Enter this to see the current partition usage:
df

E.g.
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs 3698504 3351472 146524 96% /
/dev/root 3698504 3351472 146524 96% /
devtmpfs 494800 0 494800 0% /dev
tmpfs 99820 240 99580 1% /run
tmpfs 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 199620 0 199620 0% /run/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p1 57288 19400 37888 34% /boot

The rootfs and /dev/root is the same thing, its just a debian thing the have them both appear as separate

Enter this:
sudo fdisk /dev/mmcblk0

Then press 'p' to see the current partitions on the disk. E.g.

Disk /dev/mmcblk0: 7860 MB, 7860125696 bytes
4 heads, 16 sectors/track, 239872 cylinders, total 15351808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa6202af7
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/mmcblk0p1 8192 122879 57344 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/mmcblk0p2 122880 15351807 7614464 83 Linux

Now delete the 2nd partition (it won't actually delete the data on it)
Press 'd' > Enter
Press '2' > Enter

Now re-create it:
Press 'n' > Enter
Press 'p' > Enter
Press '2' > Enter

Enter the First sector and the same value as the original /dev/mmcblk0p2 partition (122880 from the above example).

For the Last sector just press enter to use the maximum value.

Now press 'p' > Enter to see the new partition setup.
Finally press 'w' > Enter to write it

Now reboot:
sudo shutdown -r now

Once its back do the resize:
sudo resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2

This may take a little while to complete…

Now enter the command
df

and hey presto, you've expanded to use all the space :-)

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs 7513804 3352360 3810208 47% /
/dev/root 7513804 3352360 3810208 47% /
devtmpfs 494800 0 494800 0% /dev
tmpfs 99820 240 99580 1% /run
tmpfs 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
tmpfs 199620 0 199620 0% /run/shm
/dev/mmcblk0p1 57288 19400 37888 34% /boot

@guyute74 I popped the card out of my 2 and put it in my 3 and it worked great.

The only caveat would be if you have your Wifi filtering by MAC address you'll need to add the MAC address of the new Pi 3, but that's more of an infrastructure thing than anything to do with RetroPie or your Pi 3.

Thank you. I wasn't aware of Sselphs scraper until now and just used the built-in ones which...weren't great.

In any case, I think I feel confident enough to be able to maintain my tweaks when setting up a new retropie image. Thanks to you both.