ubuntu upgrade fails soon after invocatioin

[Keith Haslip]

Attempted to initiate software upgrade from 12.04LTS to14.04LTS and operation reports an error

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: update-manager 1:0.156.14.17
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-29.46-generic 3.2.24
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-29-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.7
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Oct 4 19:37:37 2014
GsettingsChanges:
 com.ubuntu.update-manager first-run false
 com.ubuntu.update-manager launch-time 1412465569
 com.ubuntu.update-manager show-details true
 com.ubuntu.update-manager window-height 638
 com.ubuntu.update-manager window-width 600
MarkForUpload: True
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: update-manager
Symptom: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2014-10-04 (0 days ago)
VarLogDistupgradeTermlog: