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I'm running a server that has been recently upgraded in place from 16.04 to 18.04. The upgrade has generally been successful, although I am now getting an error relating to the 'distro-info-data' and 'distro-info' packages. When I run sudo apt upgrade, I get the following error as part of the output:

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help resolve the situation:
 
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 distro-info-data : Breaks: distro-info (< 0.18ubuntu0.18.04.1~) but 0.14ubuntu0.2 is to be installed
E: Broken packages

Full terminal output here: https://pastebin.com/eEA8N8HQ

Now I should say that during the upgrade, when it came time to ask me if I wanted to remove the obsolete packages, I didn't get a chance to state my intent either way, because when I went to look at the list - and I was keying directly into the server, not using SSH - the keyboard and my state in the upgrade process decided to have a divorce. I couldn't get back to any kind of menu and I just rebooted and hoped 18.04 would come up. It did, and as far as the things the server needs to do to earn its keep, it is still doing them, but I would like to find a way to get this little glitch resolved.

(Well, it might be a little glitch that belies a large underlying problem... Ulp!)

Update: Running sudo dist-upgrade says that 'ubuntu-advantage-tools' has been kept back / not upgraded. This pastebin includes that as well as a grep from /etc/apt/, which indicates a lot of 'xenial' where one ought to see 'bionic': https://pastebin.com/TmCsd7qY

Thanks very much!

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  • Try sudo apt dist-upgrade instead. Also please share output of grep "^deb\ " -r /etc/apt/ --include=*.list . If you still have xenial here , this means that you are still running 16.04 LTS instead of needed 18.04 LTS (bionic).
    – N0rbert
    May 10, 2021 at 17:53
  • Thank you. dist-upgrade just clarified that 'ubuntu-advantage-tools' is being kept back; the grep output requested does have a lot of 'xenial' and no 'bionic'. Is this a quick fix or should I ask a whole new question based on that? May 10, 2021 at 18:17
  • From some previous experience I remember that ppa:ondrej/php may cause issues. So it would be useful to purge it before the do-release-upgrade.
    – N0rbert
    May 10, 2021 at 19:04
  • Erm... what about the website this server is serving, though? Would purging that kill the website? May 10, 2021 at 20:07
  • Any upgrade is really starts with backup.
    – N0rbert
    May 10, 2021 at 20:21

1 Answer 1

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The problem appears to have been that apt was still tuned into "Xenial" (16.04) sources for everything, when I needed "Bionic" (18.04). I ask about this problem specifically and eventually find a fix here:

Apt: Can't upgrade packages, and system still showing 16.04 / Xenial sources, after upgrade to 18.04 / Bionic

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