The machine has no desktop, only a command shell. It is running 12.04. I have been doing apt-get update & upgrade weekly for four years. How do I convert it to 16.04 from the command line? I have a 16.04 server install CD, do I boot from that?
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What have you followed that didn't work? Did you tried askubuntu.com/q/110477/169736?– BraiamMay 29, 2016 at 23:54
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2 Answers
General
You can always upgrade from LTS to LTS, in your case that would mean:
- upgrade from 12.04 to 14.04 and then
- upgrade from 14.04 to 16.04
As far as i know there is no supported upgrade from 12.04 to 16.04 directly.
Following this approach there is no need for your 16.04 medium
As always, consider creating a backup of your critical files before you start.
Limit to LTS
The way to limit upgrades to LTS without a GUI is to change the value of Prompt in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades.
Set it to
[DEFAULT] Prompt=lts
The possible values are
never: Never check for a new release.
normal: Check to see if a new release is available. If more than one new release is found, the release upgrader will attempt to upgrade to the release that immediately succeeds the currently-running release.
lts: Check to see if a new LTS release is available. The upgrader will attempt to upgrade to the first LTS release available after the currently-running one. Note that this option should not be used if the currently-running release is not itself an LTS release, since in that case the upgrader won't be able to determine if a newer release is available
How to upgrade
For both upgrade processes you should always update the current system via
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Then start the upgrade via
sudo do-release-upgrade
or - SPECIAL CASE - for development versions (which is valid for upgrades from 14.04 to 16.04 until 16.04.1 was released):
sudo do-release-upgrade -d
If do-release-upgrade command is not found, install it:
sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
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It should be mentioned that the LTS to LTS for 14.04 to 16.04 won't be enabled until 16.04.1, several months from now.– Thomas Ward ♦May 30, 2016 at 14:31
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True, but it's hard to determine that from your post, hence the comment.– Thomas Ward ♦May 31, 2016 at 0:31
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As far as I can tell, I must edit
/etc/update-manager/release-upgrades
to change Prompt to
[DEFAULT] Prompt=lts
Then reboot and give these commands:
sudo bash
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
{Reboot again}
sudo bash
do-release-upgrade -c
{check target version}
do-release-upgrade
{I can upgrade from 12.04 to 14.04 now; upgrading from 14.04 to 16.04 may have to wait until August}
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I asked a question about how to upgrade a server from 12.04 to 16.04. I got many leads, links to other sites, etc. Finally, I posted my own answer - the specific commands I must give to do it. My posted answer was gleaned from reading all the other answers.
Every answer has a rating. I assume higher numbers are better. I see that my summary answer has a rating of minus one. I assume this is worse than zero. How did I earn a minus one rating?
Note: all three of my computers already read "Prompt=lts"
