mythbuntu fails to upgrade from 16.04+ and should tell it is not supported anymore.

[Markus]

system is a brand new mythbuntu install that had just finished the release upgrade to zesty.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:17.04.10
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.10.0-42.46-generic 4.10.17
Uname: Linux 4.10.0-42-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.4-0ubuntu4.9
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntu
Date: Sat Dec 23 19:48:49 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-12-24 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Mythbuntu 16.04.3 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20170801)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=vt100
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to zesty on 2017-12-24 (0 days ago)

[Markus (mbaur)]

system needed another "apt dist-upgrade" before "do-release-upgrade" would succeed. The solution became clear after seeing this in main.log and investigating the package:

2017-12-23 19:57:21,565 ERROR Dist-upgrade failed: 'The package 'mythbuntu-desktop' is marked for removal but it is in the removal blacklist.'

[Markus (mbaur)]

background info:

system had been installed under hardy heron and upgraded many times. Last running OS on this hardware config was 17.10 artful.

Many years have passed and very little of the original hardware hasn't been replaced. I decided I wanted to clean out the cruft and do a clean start. So I started with mythbuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso from a USB stick. Additional xfs media disks / boot backups had to be disconnected. Otherwise the installer would hang. System was installed onto a clean partition. After the installation was finished and all apt upgrades were done, release was switched from lts to normal. From there I tried to run "do-release-upgrade" successively to get to 17.10. The last stage failed with the error above.

After fixing the mythbuntu-desktop package problem by doing another "apt dist-upgrade" the final upgrade to 17.10 worked fine. So this may not be a bug, but rather a package configuration issue. The installer isn't very good at communicating underlying issues up to the user.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thanks for your report. As you figured out it happened because mythbuntu is no longer supported [1] and it was the only desktop metapackage installed on your system.

I'm moving this bug to the mythbuntu project.

[1] http://www.mythbuntu.org/home/news/mythbuntusolongandthanksforallthefish