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One of my servers is unable to upgrade from Ubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) to newer versions:

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=quantal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 12.10"

$ cat /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades | grep -v '^$\|^\s*\#'
[DEFAULT]
Prompt=normal

(also tried with Prompt=lts)

$sudo apt-get update
...

$sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

$ sudo do-release-upgrade -d
Checking for a new ubuntu release
No new release found

Tried to change servers to http://old-releases.ubuntu.com (got from here), and from digitalOcean but result is the same.

Eventually I upgraded this server using the following steps:

  1. Backup /etc/apt/sources.list file
  2. Changed original servers to old-releases.ubuntu.com
  3. Changed all quantal to raring in /etc/apt/sources.list file
  4. Updated package lists (apt-get update)
  5. Updated packages (apt-get dist-upgrade) - everything completed smoothly
  6. Rebooted server
  7. Checked for new distribution (sudo do-release-upgrade -d) - still not found
  8. Changed raring to saucy in /etc/apt/sources.list file
  9. Repeated steps 4-7 with same results
  10. Restored backed-up /etc/apt/sources.list file
  11. Changed saucy to trusty in /etc/apt/sources.list file
  12. Repeated steps 4-7 with same results

Now I have Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) release. It is OK until 2019-04, but it still cannot find upgrades.

Is there a way to restore the ability of an Ubuntu distribution to upgrade using the do-release-upgrade script?

Command line solution is highly preferred.

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6
  • You can not upgrade from 12.10 to 14.04 a supported way. It is better to install 14.04. You can keep all data.
    – Pilot6
    Jul 11, 2015 at 11:46
  • @muru: I had used a solution with old-releases from this page. It had not helped.
    – Yuriy Petrovskiy
    Jul 11, 2015 at 12:10
  • Post the actual output of sudo apt-get update when you used the old-releases mirror.
    – muru
    Jul 11, 2015 at 12:13
  • @muru: apt-get update gives no errors. Output is here
    – Yuriy Petrovskiy
    Jul 11, 2015 at 12:28
  • Changing the code name in sources.list is the Debian way to do upgrades. As long as you have a backup to go to if you fail in your task, this would be your only option to upgrade. You might need to do a combination of apt-get dist-upgrade and aptitude dist-upgrade to get your server up to date. Aptitude deletes programs so make sure you have a backup of the installed files dpkg --get-selections > /safe/location
    – AWippler
    Jul 11, 2015 at 16:06

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

To upgrade to 14.04, download it's .iso file, burn it onto a flash drive. You will get an option to upgrade during the installation process, similar to the one in the image. You won't loose your data stored in your /home directory.

Now if you are on a server and cannot do it like this,you can do it from the command line, but it will require some effort. You can only upgrade to the next distro. So you need to upgrade to the next version, which is 13.04, and so on ultil you get to your LTS. Canonical may have removed the sources for 13.04, but digitalOcean still provides the sources for old releases here.

So update your sources.list with that from digitalocean and then upgrade sudo apt-get update sudo do-release-update

enter image description here

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5
  • 1. No CD at server. 2. I have only ssh console access. Updated question.
    – Yuriy Petrovskiy
    Jul 11, 2015 at 12:06
  • @YuriyPetrovskiy, I've updated my answer. I see that your sources seem to be working fine. But you could try the alternative source.
    – daltonfury42
    Jul 11, 2015 at 13:01
  • Done that also. No changes. Even after manually changing quantal to raring and updating update-manager-core to newer one.
    – Yuriy Petrovskiy
    Jul 11, 2015 at 13:08
  • @YuriyPetrovskiy did you try without a -d option?
    – daltonfury42
    Jul 11, 2015 at 13:09
  • Yes. Same result.
    – Yuriy Petrovskiy
    Jul 11, 2015 at 13:32

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