9.04 to 10.04 upgrade problems

[WaltL]

I've been running 9.04 for 1 1/2 years and now I see it is no longer supported with upgrades.

The only option available via the update manager is upgrade to ver. 9.1. So I downloaded the 10.04.1-alternate iso and proceeded to mount it as a cdrom with:

sudo mount -o loop ~Desktop/ubuntu-10.04.1-alternate-amd64.iso /media/cdrom0

Next, I launched the dialog box with:
gksu “sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade

However, I get a message that says "Can not upgrade. An upgrade from 'jaunty' to 'lucid' is not supported with this tool" :frown:

I also tried ./cdromupgrade.exe from within the media/cdrom0 dir, but got the same message.

So does this mean that I will have to upgrade to 9.1 before I can upgrade to 10.04? Seems unlikely. Or, does it mean that the upgrade just won't work using the route I tried, e.g. do I burn the cd and launch the installer at boot... also seems unlikely, but thought I'd ask before I try it.

[theozzlives]

Unfortunately yes. You can't skip upgrades. The only other option is to do a fresh install. On a promising note, 10.04.1 is a LTS (Long Term Support) that will not reach EOL (End Of Life) until April 2013.

[WaltL]

Bummer! Thanks for the heads up.

[kvorg]

WaltL, I realize this is a bit too late for you, but someone else my profit from this. So here we go:

Not true. If you have an old Ubuntu instalation, running, say, Jaunty, you can, in fact, upgrade. But not in a safe and supported way.

Canonical can not support all the old releases by providing security patches, so they have LTS (Long Time Support) releases, where they do provide security upgrades for a long time, and they support upgrades from one LTS release to another. But Jaunty, as you noticed, is not a LTS release, and neither is Karmic - both are unsupported by now. Furthermore, the update-manager tool can not upgrade directly from Jaunty to Lucid, as you have realized.

On a more technical level, the upgrade-manager has configuration files, and here we are interested in this:


/etc/update-manager/meta-release

The meta-release configuration file contains this line:


URI = http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release

This tells the update-manager where to look for the available distributions. The file you find at this address lists all the ubuntu distributions. However, under Dist: karmic, the meta-release file at the specified address says:


Supported: 0

If only we could change that... And of course we can. You download the file to a web-accessible location (I did not try any file: URIs), for example your web server:


wget http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release
mv meta-release ~/public_html/

Then you use your favourite text editor to change the line to:

Supported: 1

And, finally, you chaURI = http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-releasenge the update-manager meta-release configuration file to point to the changed info file:


URI = http://localhost/~yournamehere/meta-release

(This assumes you are running a web server, for example apache, and have user public html directories visible. YMMV.)

If you start the update-manager again (via GUI or on the command line), it should happily upgrade you to the unsupported and possibly security-vulnerability-ridden karmic release.

Notes:


You are now entirely on your own, in the unsupported land. But, then again, you were running and insecure unsupported release before, have you not? Naughty you.

It is a good idea to change the URI line back once you are done unless you want to never be offered a new distribution upgrade ever again. So it would be a good idea to copy the line before editing, commenting the original line with a hash (#). Yes, I am being intentionally obtuse here, but, hey, you were running an obsolete release for years.

It would be a good idea to do all of the above behind a firewall, perhaps also a NAT, surely with no services running with ports open to the outside wall. But if you survived that long, you probably are not very connected with the outside world anyway. Just a thought, because Canonical means it when they say this is unsupported.

If any of this seems complicated, you probably should not be doing it and should get someone to do it for you or, alternatively, backup your machine, make a fresh install and restore your files. This is silly and unnecessary, but will feel right to a certain kind of people.


Your future: Yes, you will have to upgrade release-by-release until you hit the next LTS release, and then possibly you should stay there unless you plan to consider regular upgrades in your future life. But if you don't, you will have to go and select upgrade options: regular release, since after any LTS relase, Ubuntu will switch that option to only ever offer LTS releases. This is annoying, but is there to help people who seem to have trouble with regular upgrades.

This has been tested with an upgrade from Jaunty to Natty.

Good luck!

[rewolff]

Thanks! Seems to be working for me. :-)

I'm currently doing the Jaunty -> Karmic upgrade, I'll continue doing upgrades until I'm at Natty (11.04).

FYI, this will stop working once Canonical removes the "karmic" files from the repositories. I'm not sure if they will. Anyway. apparently it's best not to let machines even if they are firewalled off get too far behind.

[rewolff]

Ok. I'm upgrading another machine today. Same problem. Same solution. Slightly different twist today....

It seems the "meta release" that the URI points to is cached. So when trying to upgrade yesterday I got the "... lucid ... not supported" message.

Next I pointed the meta-release URI to where I had prepared a "fixed" meta-release file last time I ran into this (three weeks ago).

It turns out that the cached file was downloaded yesterday, and the "fixed" meta-release was last modified 3 weeks ago. So then it doesn't download the new version. This time I had to edit (or remove I guess) the cached file.....

[Corryl]

Though this is a little old, just wanted to say thanks. I really didn't want to have a painful upgrade....its actually a mythbuntu box, but same procedure worked well! Perhaps it's because I already edited my /etc/apt/sources.list to have the old-releases.ubuntu.com instead of archive.ubuntu.com , but either way, its still finding (and currently downloading) all the necessary packages! This or using the CD should be the number one hit on google for unable to upgrade from jaunty to lucid or 9.04 to 10.04 or whatever it said!