Error in do-release-upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04

[Bill St. Clair]

I updated an old virtual private server from 11.04 today. The upgrade to 11.10 worked fine, but the further upgrade to 12.04 failed.

Reporting this bug because the upgrade message asked me to. Here's the full output from the bug to the end. /var/log/dist-upgrade/ attached, as instructed.

=====

The installation of a 2.6 kernel _could_ ask you to install a new libc
first, this is NOT a bug, and should *NOT* be reported. In that case,
please add lenny sources to your /etc/apt/sources.list and run:
  apt-get install -t lenny linux-image-2.6
Then reboot into this new kernel, and proceed with your upgrade
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.15-0ubuntu10.4_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already
                                                              ERROR:root:got an error from dpkg for pkg: '/var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.15-0ubuntu10.4_amd64.deb': 'subprocess new pre-installation script returned error exit status 1'
                                                                                                                Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.15-0ubuntu10.4_amd64.deb
Error in function:

ERROR:root:not handled exception:
SystemError: E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

A fatal error occurred

Please report this as a bug and include the files
/var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log and /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log in
your report. The upgrade has aborted.
Your original sources.list was saved in
/etc/apt/sources.list.distUpgrade.

SystemError: E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

ERROR:root:SystemError from cache.commit(): installArchives() failed

Could not install the upgrades

The upgrade has aborted. Your system could be in an unusable state. A
recovery will run now (dpkg --configure -a).

Please report this bug in a browser at
http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+filebug and
attach the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ to the bug report.
installArchives() failed

Setting up libsnmp-base (5.4.3~dfsg-2.4ubuntu1.1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libnih-dbus1:
 libnih-dbus1 depends on libnih1 (= 1.0.3-4ubuntu9.1); however:
  Version of libnih1 on system is 1.0.3-4ubuntu2.
dpkg: error processing libnih-dbus1 (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 libnih-dbus1

Upgrade complete

The upgrade has completed but there were errors during the upgrade
process.

To continue please press [ENTER]

[Bill St. Clair (billstclair)]

It appears that upgrading libc6 to 2.15 requires that I upgrade my kernel to 2.6.24 or later. Will check that out.

[Bill St. Clair (billstclair)]

I'm running in an OpenVZ container with a 2.6.18 kernel, so I can't upgrade it. Seems I have to reinstall my Ubuntu, and restore my fortunately-backed-up bits. Sigh...

Would be nice if the installer could warn that the install can't work.