1

I am trying to upgrade my Ubuntu 14.04 to Ubuntu 16.04. My update manager notifies me that a newer version is available. It also gives me the upgrade button.

When I click 'upgrade', it asks for password, but after that, literally nothing happens.

I tried this several times with no luck, and there doesn't seem to be a similar issue reported anywhere.

Erdnase
  • 595

2 Answers2

2

Try running

sudo do-release-upgrade

If it fails, update your question to include the output.

Organic Marble
  • 23,641
  • 15
  • 70
  • 122
  • "do-release-upgrade" and "do-release-upgrade -d" I am seeing both of this being used for upgrading all over the internet. What is the difference between these two? Should we avoid using -d option? I was not sure about this, so I didnt take risk. – Erdnase Sep 03 '16 at 15:23
  • There is no reason to use -d at this point. That was for early upgraders who were upgrading to the development version of 16.04. In "Software and Updates" make sure that under Updates tab the last box shows "for long term support versions". – Organic Marble Sep 03 '16 at 16:28
  • Sorry, now I am blocked by this. http://askubuntu.com/questions/820795/ubuntu-14-04-interrupted-upgrade-causing-no-new-release-found – Erdnase Sep 04 '16 at 11:12
  • It appears you have moved on to a new problem, sorry to hear that. If this answer solved the specific issue you asked about please mark it as solved. – Organic Marble Sep 04 '16 at 12:20
0

Online upgrades can be done and I've done quite a few successfully over the years but in many instances they fail*. Also note that even when successful, the whole process is tedious (it can take hours), and prone to errors because it may require user intervention more than once to answer a few questions that more often than not are quite daunting for new users.

Assuming your have done your backups, I strongly advice a clean install instead.

  • The main reasons for failure are third party software (from PPAs) and proprietary graphics drivers.
  • I have literally 100's of GB unused disk space. Next time I'll create a new partion and new install there. Then test everything over time. The only change would be extra grub option. On 14.04 to 16.04 I had too much faith as it was my first upgrade. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Sep 02 '16 at 19:50
  • I have done quite a lot of customisations and tweaking on my system. And my research projects are configured on this. So I don't want to lose all those by a fresh install. Because of the same reason, I have taken a clonezilla clone of my / partition. But I still want to move to 16.04 without losing my customisations. Thanks anyway. – Erdnase Sep 03 '16 at 15:27