warn if universe is not enabled and an upgrade requires it

[Fibonacci]

I'm trying to upgrade to Kubuntu 12.10 and I'm getting this error message:

Can't install 'kubuntu-netbook'
It was impossible to install a required package. Please report this as a bug using 'ubuntu-bug ubuntu-release-upgrader-core' in a terminal.

Then I'm given the option to either close the window or report the bug. Closing the window results in the following error message:

Could not calculate the upgrade
An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade: The package 'kubuntu-desktop' is marked for removal but it is in the removal blacklist. This can be caused by: * Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu * Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu * Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu If none of this applies, then please report this bug using the command 'ubuntu-bug ubuntu-release-upgrader-core' in a terminal.

Running 'ubuntu-bug ubuntu-release-upgrader-core' in a terminal results in the following error:

Package ubuntu-release-upgrader-core does not exist

The upgrade, thus, never goes beyond "Setting new software channels", and I'm stuck on 12.04.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add the log files from '/var/log/dist-upgrade/' to this bug report as separate attachments? Thanks in advance.

[Bart Wise (bart-c-wise+kubuntu)]

I have the same issue. I'll attach my log files.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

From main.log we see:

2012-10-25 04:44:22,615 DEBUG plugins for condition 'PostDistUpgradeCache' are '[]'
2012-10-25 04:44:22,615 DEBUG plugins for condition 'quantalPostDistUpgradeCache' are '[]'
2012-10-25 04:44:22,615 DEBUG plugins for condition 'from_precisePostDistUpgradeCache' are '[]'
2012-10-25 04:44:22,616 DEBUG metapkg 'kubuntu-desktop' installed but marked_delete
2012-10-25 04:44:22,616 DEBUG none of the '['ubuntu-desktop', 'kubuntu-desktop', 'xubuntu-desktop', 'ubuntustudio-desktop', 'ichthux-desktop', 'mythbuntu-desktop', 'ubuntu-netbook', 'kubuntu-netbook', 'lubuntu-desktop']' meta-pkgs installed
2012-10-25 04:44:22,616 DEBUG guessing 'kubuntu-netbook' as missing meta-pkg
2012-10-25 04:44:22,616 ERROR failed to mark 'kubuntu-netbook' for install ("The cache has no package named 'kubuntu-netbook'")
2012-10-25 04:47:00,989 DEBUG blacklist expr 'kubuntu-desktop' matches 'kubuntu-desktop'
2012-10-25 04:47:00,989 DEBUG The package 'kubuntu-desktop' is marked for removal but it's in the removal blacklist
2012-10-25 04:47:05,462 ERROR Dist-upgrade failed: 'The package 'kubuntu-desktop' is marked for removal but it is in the removal blacklist.'

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

The bug seems to be caused by "universe" not being enabled. The upgrader found kubuntu-netbook-default-settings installed and guessed that the metapackage is kubuntu-netbook but that package is now in universe as is kubuntu-desktop.

It seems like upgrades with kubuntu-desktop will fail in the same way on systems without universe:
kubuntu-netbook | 1.254 | precise | all
kubuntu-netbook | 1.263 | quantal/universe | all

So ideally the release upgrader should either warn or enable universe. In some twisted way its actually correct to fail as the user wants main only and this would bring him to a universe system.

[Graeme Nelson (graeme-b)]

Went to upload term.log, but the file is empty.

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 12.10 (quantal) reached end-of-life on May 16, 2014.
Ubuntu 12.04 (precise) reached end-of-life on April 28, 2017.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

A recent example of this is the python-is-python2 transition and systems trying to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 but not having universe enabled (where python-is-python2 is located) and that preventing the upgrade from being calculable.