How do I ensure an lts upgrade from 13.10 to 14.04?

Question

I am upgrading from 13.10 to 14.04 in Terminal mode.

My understanding is that apt-get update updates the list of available repos, and apt-get upgrade performs the upgrade. It's true that I did not understand the difference between sudo apt-get upgrade and do-release-upgrade. Thanks for explaining this point.

To clarify my process, Muon Update Manager could not download any data, regardless of the settings I used, and believe me, I tried them all.

So I decided to work exclusively in Terminal, which helps my understanding when things get a bit complicated.

Initially, I tried do-release-upgrade, which gave an error message.

In order to perform sudo apt-get update, I needed to set `Prompt=normal.

I researched this online, and similar to the experience of others, at least in 13.10, sudo apt-get update would not run, with Prompt=lts. With Prompt=normal, it did.

sudo apt-get update completed successfully (after much tweaking of existing repos in sources.list.d and sources.list).

At first, running sudo apt-get update resulted in numerous errors.

Online research discovered several very similar situations which indicated that third-party ppa's can block sudo apt-get update.

Each time I deleted an entry from sources-list.d, apt-get update got a little further. As there were only four entries, all for third-party apps I don't really need, I ended up deleting them all, i.e., sources-list.d is now empty.

When I looked at sources-list, I discovered it was a real mess (created by Update Manager), with several duplicate entries, a few bastardized entries, and archives from different locations. I'm in Canada, by the way.

I researched online and found an example of a pristine sources-list, then altered mine to match, commenting out the entries I did not want.

My sources-list now contains no references to "saucy", and is set to download only "trusty", "trusty-upgrades", and "trust-security".

Here it is (http's altered to avoid live links, comments indicated by "--" to avoid accidental bolding):

fiteyes@fiteyes-wr:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list  
-- deb cdrom:[Kubuntu 12.04 LTS _Precise Pangolin_ - Release i386 (20120423)]/ precise main restricted  
-- See -ttp://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to
-- newer versions of the distribution. 

deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted  
deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main restricted  

-- Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the  
-- distribution.  

deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main restricted  
deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main restricted  

-- N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu  
-- team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any  
-- review or updates from the Ubuntu security team.  
-- deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe  
-- deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty universe  
-- deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates universe  
-- deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates universe  
-- N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu  
-- team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to  
-- your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in  
-- multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu  
-- security team.  
-- deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty multiverse  
-- deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty multiverse  
-- deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates multiverse  
-- deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates multiverse  
-- Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports'  
-- repository  
-- N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as  
-- extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes  
-- newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.  
-- Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review  
-- or updates from the Ubuntu security team.  
-- deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ Trusty-backports main restricted  universe multiverse  
-- deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ Trusty-backports main  restricted universe multiverse  
-- Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's  
-- 'partner' repository.  
-- This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the  
-- respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.  
-- deb -ttp://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu trusty partner  
-- deb-src -ttp://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu trusty partner  

deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security main restricted  
deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security main restricted  

-- deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security universe  
-- deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security universe  
-- deb -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security multiverse  
-- deb-src -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-security multiverse  
-- This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party  
-- developers who want to ship their latest software.  
-- deb -ttp://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main  
-- deb-src -ttp://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty main  
-- deb -ttp://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty, trusty-updates, trusty-security  
-- deb-src -ttp://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty, trusty-updates, trusty-security  
fiteyes@fiteyes-wr:~$  

sudo apt-get update now ran without errors.

Here are the results:

fiteyes@fiteyes-wr:~$ sudo apt-get update  
Ign -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty InRelease  
Ign -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates InRelease  
Ign -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security InRelease  
Get:1 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty Release.gpg [933 B]  
Get:2 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates Release.gpg [933 B]  
Get:3 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security Release.gpg [933 B]  
Get:4 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty Release [58.5 kB]  
Get:5 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates Release [63.5 kB]  
Get:6 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security Release [63.5 kB]  
Get:7 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty/main Sources [1,064 kB]  
Get:8 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty/restricted Sources [5,433 B]  
Get:9 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty/main i386 Packages [1,348 kB]  
Get:10 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty/restricted i386 Packages [13.4 kB]  
Get:11 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty/main Translation-en_CA [7,324 B]  
Get:12 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty/main Translation-en [762 kB]  
Get:13 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty/restricted Translation-en [3,457 B]  
Get:14 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates/main Sources [196 kB]  
Get:15 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates/restricted Sources [2,564 B]                                                                 
Get:16 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates/main i386 Packages [500 kB]                                                                
Get:17 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates/restricted i386 Packages [9,256 B]                                                        
Get:18 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates/main Translation-en [243 kB]                                                             
Get:19 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-updates/restricted Translation-en [2,433 B]                                                        
Get:20 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security/main Sources [80.2 kB]                                                                    
Get:21 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security/restricted Sources [2,061 B]                                                              
Get:22 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security/main i386 Packages [256 kB]                                                               
Get:23 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security/restricted i386 Packages [8,846 B]                                                        
Get:24 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security/main Translation-en [136 kB]                                                              
Get:25 -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty-security/restricted Translation-en [2,266 B]                                                       
Ign -ttp://ca.archive.ubuntu.com trusty/restricted Translation-en_CA                                                                          
Fetched 4,830 kB in 23s (206 kB/s)                                                                                                         
Reading package lists... Done

Please note: this is a basic upgrade, no third-party ppa's (except possibly a grub editor, which I will add later).

I am concerned that running sudo apt-get upgrade now will take me all the way to 14.10, which I do not want.

Will changing update-manager back to "Prompt=lts" at this point, ensure I get 14.04, or will that even work now that the "trusty" files have been downloaded?

I've searched through the duplicates and see nothing that answers this specific question.

I cannot do a fresh install, because I will lose valuable, remotely installed, health related software.

Any knowledgeable input appreciated.

Thanks

Thanks very much for your response thus far, Thomas. You've been very helpful. I have three follow-up questions:

1. Given what I've now explained, do you still recommend running do-release-upgrade.

2. For my edification, based on what I've now explained, what would sudo apt-get upgrade do?

3. My desire is to upgrade to 14.04 while keeping the app that was installed remotely in tact. Which of these methods, if either, will accomplish this?

Again, much appreciated. Look forward to your response. :)

Answer 1

In order to perform "sudo apt-get update", I needed to set "Prompt=normal".

You seem to be confusing apt-get update with upgrading your version of Ubuntu. apt-get update just updates APT's list of available software versions for your current Ubuntu version, it does not change your Ubuntu version.

Prompt=normal has no effect on a normal call to apt-get update.

"sudo apt-get update" completed successfully (after much tweaking of existing repos in sources.list.d and sources.list).

What tweaking? Did you tweak these and if so, how? You should not have to do this to upgrade Ubuntu, just run do-release-upgrade. Depending on how you have modified sources.list, you may find yourself unable to do a apt-get upgrade (or dist-upgrade) properly and may even break your system. Hopefully do-release-upgrade can still sort it out for you, but pay attention to what it is doing.

I am concerned that running "sudo apt-get upgrade" now will take me all the way to 14.10, which I do not want.

That all depends on what you did to sources.list or sources.list.d, which you don't mention. It would still be worth running do-release-upgrade at this point, as that will not only find out what version you can upgrade to, but it will handle the updating of sources.list for you if you choose to proceed. Hopefully the changes you've made to sources.list already will not interfere with it.

Do NOT run apt-get upgrade (or dist-upgrade) at this point if you have messed with your sources.list and are not sure if you will break your system. You don't want it to try and upgrade direct from 13.10 to 14.10 and skip the version in between, because attempting to do that is likely to cause serious problems. Ff you use do-release-upgrade to do the upgrade instead, and don't mess with sources.list, it won't try and do something silly like that.

Will changing update-manager back to "Prompt=lts" at this point, ensure I get 14.04, or will that even work now that the "trusty" files have been downloaded?

If you are on 13.10, then it will not matter whether you have lts or normal, because either way the next version, and the version that do-release-upgrade will recommend, is 14.04. However, it will affect whether an upgrade to 14.10 is offered the next time you run do-release-upgrade after you have upgraded to 14.04 (or check for upgrades in the desktop interface).

---

Your follow-ups:

Given what I've now explained, do you still recommend running do-release-upgrade.

Yes. I'm fairly confident it'll still work, but if you can easily revert the changes you did to sources.list first, or at least revert to a basic sources.list with only the regular saucy sources, then I'd do so.

Note that your current sources.list only includes main and restricted, and omits universe and multiverse, which effectively omits a huge amount of software. Unless you have a reason not to include them (particularly universe) I'd put them back in.

For my edification, based on what I've now explained, what would sudo apt-get upgrade do?

It would upgrade some packages to the version in Trusty. Note that apt-get dist-ugprade would upgrade even more. In theory, this is how upgrades to new releases work in Debian (which is where this system comes from), but Ubuntu has its own upgrade procedure housed in do-release-upgrade which takes some additional steps and is a little more fool-proof and is therefore the recommended way to upgrade to a new Ubuntu release. For example, it does things like notify you about software that does not have an equivalent in the new release.

My desire is to upgrade to 14.04 while keeping the app that was installed remotely in tact. Which of these methods, if either, will accomplish this?

do-release-upgrade would be preferred.

Answer 2

You can run apt-get upgrade command. It just upgrades your packages and software, not the actual operating system. You should do an apt-get upgrade before do-release-upgrade

Just to make sure you get the LTS upgrade, you could go for a simple solution by going to Software & Updates, then go to Updates tab and on the bottom choose "Notify me of a new Ubuntu version: For long-term support versions". (Prompt=lts should do the same trick)

Then you can run

sudo do-release-upgrade

and it should tell you there is 14.04 available.