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I have a virtual private server that runs the out-of-date Ubuntu 10.10. I'd like to upgrade to 12.04 LTS.

Currently apt doesn't work on this box, and the command do-release-upgrade is not found.

There is nothing on this VPS that I need to save, I'm OK with wiping it clean and installing 12.04, but I don't know how to do that when my only access is to a terminal remotely.

Eric Wilson
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  • What does not work with apt-get? What error do you get? I think it is possible to upgrade from LTS to LTS. – Salem Sep 06 '13 at 12:44
  • I'm not upgrading from LTS to LTS, but from 10.10 to 12.04. – Eric Wilson Sep 06 '13 at 13:32
  • I don't think that this is a dup of the linked question. As I specified, the do-release-upgrade command is not found. – Eric Wilson Sep 07 '13 at 01:18
  • And the answer says how to install it... – Braiam Sep 07 '13 at 05:02
  • @Braiam Good point. But with apt broken, and with this being a remote server, it is far from obvious to me how I would install do-release-upgrade. – Eric Wilson Sep 07 '13 at 15:23
  • Do you have ftp server or wget command in the remote system? You can download them from http://packages.ubuntu.com/update-manager-core (I didn't found the specific packages) or use the answer below. – Braiam Sep 07 '13 at 16:04

1 Answers1

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I'm not sure how would one go about wiping and reinstalling Ubuntu remotely, but you could try the following to upgrade remotely, without apt and do-release-upgrade.

  1. Download the "Alternate CD" for 12.04.3 LTS server edition using:

    For 64-bit:

    wget http://releases.ubuntu.com/precise/ubuntu-12.04.3-alternate-amd64.iso

    For 32-bit:

    wget http://releases.ubuntu.com/precise/ubuntu-12.04.3-alternate-i386.iso

  2. Mount it to /media/cdrom using:

    sudo mount -o loop ubuntu-12.04.3-alternate-amd64.iso /media/cdrom

  3. Run the following command to start the upgrade:

    sh /media/cdrom/cdromupgrade

    Or, if you're not root:

    gksu "sh '/media/cdrom/cdromupgrade'"

Note 1: I don't know if it's possible to directly upgrade from 10.10 to 12.04. I think you'll need to go through the releases in between, one by one.

Note 2: I haven't tried the above steps before, so I'm not sure if it will work. But according to this: PreciseUpgrade, it should. The steps there indicate to mount the .iso file to "the exact name of the CD", but I'm not sure what the exact name of the CD is on 10.10.

Alaa Ali
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  • gksu in a cli environment? Nice! BTW, you should add that answer to the main question ;). – Braiam Sep 07 '13 at 12:57
  • I haven't tried this, so not accepting. Found a way to fix apt (pointing to old-releases) which is solving my problem for now. – Eric Wilson Sep 07 '13 at 15:35