[SOLVED] Ubuntu Upgrade Problems

[smcr]

Hi,

First post here. Have question about upgrading Ubuntu. Have been using Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) for last 18 months. Want to upgrade to newer versions.

I have read in various places that one should do this incrementally i.e. upgrade to Gutsy than to Hardy than to Intrepid.

I have also read that to upgrade from Gutsy I just need to run update-manager and should get a message saying: "New distribution release '7.10' available". I do this but don't get this message. I may have at some point but didn't do anything about it. I have also changed the repositories to point to the "old-releases" location as advised but doesn't seem to help.

I suppose I could burn a CD and upgrade but seems like overkill. Any suggestions?

Thanks

S

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

What is in lsb-release file?

cat /etc/lsb-release

I would suggest you to go for fresh install of latest version instead of upgrade.

[smcr]

Hi and Welcome !

What is in lsb-release file?

cat /etc/lsb-release

I would suggest you to go for fresh install of latest version instead of upgrade.

Thanks for reply and the welcome! Output from cat /etc/lsb-release command:
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=7.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=feisty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 7.04"

You're probably right about fresh install. Just doesn't seem the user friendly way! Ubuntu running on dual boot computer (XP other OS). I presume I should backup everything beforehand? Do I reformat the partition for fresh install?

Thanks.

[jmadero]

I almost always have problems with upgrades. When I hadn't separated my home folder from my root I just backed up my home folder and install a fresh one from a USB drive using isotostick. Otherwise if you already have your home folder separate I'd recommend doing a fresh install. For some reason updates always go wrong in some way or another for me

[smcr]

Hi,

Thanks again both of you for your reply. I though I'd post a quick update of what I did for the benefit of any future readers.

In the end, to avoid issues with partitioning etc., I stuck to upgrading sequentially from Feisty up to Intrepid. I roughly followed the lines of this guy:
Ubuntu: Upgrade Edgy to Intrepid Tim’s Weblog

Each time I need to change the /etc/apt/sources.list file to the appropriate archives (noting that older version of Ubuntu are not the same archive as the currently supported versions). I then updated the packages lists and upgraded using apt-get.

You were right about the problems! I found going from Gutsy to Heron particularly troublesome and had to use a failsafe terminal a couple of times as computer would crash when in Gnome.

Even when had upgraded to Intrepid, there were still some problems downloading packages due to missing dependencies. I found switching to aptitude solved these problems. Its seems to handle such dependencies better.

It all took a few hours but all working great now.

Thanks again for your input.

[devils casper]

Distro Upgrade never worked for me too and I prefer clean install only.
Glad to help you and do start a new thread if you have any other question.