Update to 20.10 failed according to lsb_release -a

Question

I tried updating my computer to Ubuntu 20.10, however it seems to have failed.

What I did:

sudo do-release-upgrade

This seemed to have worked, it ran through and the computer restarted with a gorilla welcoming me as new background image. However lsb_release -a tells me I'm still on 20.04:

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS (fossa-bulbasaur X38)
Release:    20.04
Codename:   focal

Running sudo do-release-upgrade again ends in "aborting"

$ sudo do-release-upgrade
Checking for a new Ubuntu release
Get:1 Upgrade tool signature [819 B]                                                                                       
Get:2 Upgrade tool [1’338 kB]                                                                                              
Fetched 1’339 kB in 0s (0 B/s)                                                                                             
authenticate 'groovy.tar.gz' against 'groovy.tar.gz.gpg' 
extracting 'groovy.tar.gz'
Reading cache
Checking package manager
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done
Hit http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy InRelease

Hit http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy-security InRelease

Hit http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy-updates InRelease

Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy/main Sources [1’300 kB]

Get:2 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy-security/universe i386 Packages [13.8 kB]

Get:3 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy-security/universe amd64 Packages [17.3 kB]
[...]
Fetched 58.9 MB in 6s (9’192 kB/s)

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done
Checking for installed snaps
Calculating snap size requirements
Updating repository information
Hit http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy InRelease

Hit http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy-security InRelease

Hit http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu groovy-updates InRelease

Fetched 0 B in 0s (0 B/s)
Checking package manager
Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done
Calculating the changes
Calculating the changes
Restoring original system state
Aborting
Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done

I don't know in what state my system currently is... The sources all have groovy packets, the background image changed, but the OS clearly still is 20.04.

Would be glad for some help on this...

OS: Ubuntu 20.04, 5.8.0-26-generic / Hardware: Dell XPS 13 9310

Answer 1

I had the same problem (on a Dell Precision 3450 workstation with Ubuntu 20.04 preinstalled) and traced it back to the file /usr/lib/os-release by reading the code of lsb_release (which is a python script).

The file /usr/lib/os-release is part of the package base-files, but is for some reason not updated when a newer version of the package is installed during the release upgrade. That's probably due to customizations by Dell, I have no idea.

In any case, I managed to solve the problem by downloading and unpacking the deb package and overwriting the file /usr/lib/os-release with the new version by hand. When running sudo do-release-upgrade after that, it offered me to upgrade to 21.10 as expected, instead of offering 21.04 again.

After upgrading to 21.10, lsb_release -a was again off and told me that I was still on 21.04. After replacing /usr/lib/os-release with the newest version by hand again, it seems to work now.

I'll report back if it's obviously broken.

Update: It seemed my hack resulted in a broken system, see here.

Update 2: I think I fixed the problem, by removing the packages dca-enabler-packages dca-enabler, see discussion see here. I also installed the package linux-image-generic and changed the boot order to boot it by default since the oem kernel doesnt' get updates through the non LTS releases if i understand correctly.

Answer 2

User jos from the comment section is right. If you have the groovy repos in your /etc/apt/sources.list and do

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

you have technically an up-to-date Ubuntu 20.10 installation, regardless of what the text file says in /etc/lsb-release.

I don't know how you ended up with wrong lsb-release info. I would recommend you to cleanly install Ubuntu 20.04, as pointed out in your other question thread, as this gives you gives you a lot more possibilities currently to try things out easily with your Dell XPS 13, since Dell is officially supporting that release for that machine.