An unresolvable problem occurred from 14.04 to 15.10

[themusicgod1]

1. installed 12.04 and upgraded to 14.04 successfully

(1.1 remove unity install gnome, due to unrelated reason)

2. Change upgrade-manager from "long term releases only" to "any release"

3. add

4. do-release-upgrade

"An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade.

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. "

This shouldn't be right:
* it's not a prerelease version - it's 14.04 the LTS version
* It's upgrading to a version that has been stable for quite some time
* there shouldn't be any packages that aren't provided by ubuntu - it's pretty close to only what was running on 12.04 for that particular upgrade

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:0.220.8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-74.118-generic 3.13.11-ckt30
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-74-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.19
Architecture: i386
CrashDB: ubuntu
Date: Mon Jan 18 17:10:04 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-01-16 (2 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release i386 (20130213)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2016-01-18 (0 days ago)
mtime.conffile..etc.update.manager.release.upgrades: 2016-01-18T17:00:47.220347

[themusicgod1 (themusicgod1)]

Building data structures... Done
No candidate ver: account-plugin-identica
No candidate ver: appmenu-gtk
No candidate ver: appmenu-gtk3
No candidate ver: checkbox
No candidate ver: ekiga
No candidate ver: foomatic-filters
No candidate ver: gnuplot-nox
No candidate ver: gs-cjk-resource
No candidate ver: guile-1.8-libs
No candidate ver: gwibber
No candidate ver: im-switch
No candidate ver: jockey-common
No candidate ver: jockey-gtk
No candidate ver: libapt-inst1.4
No candidate ver: libarchive12
No candidate ver: libavcodec53
No candidate ver: libavformat53
No candidate ver: libavutil51
No candidate ver: libbabl-0.0-0
No candidate ver: libbamf0
No candidate ver: libbamf3-0
No candidate ver: libbind9-80
No candidate ver: libboost-iostreams1.46.1
No candidate ver: libboost-program-options1.46.1
No candidate ver: libboost-serialization1.46.1
No candidate ver: libboost-signals1.46.1
No candidate ver: libboost-signals1.54.0
No candidate ver: libboost-thread1.46.1
No candidate ver: libbrlapi0.5
No candidate ver: libcamel-1.2-29
No candidate ver: libcapi20-3
No candidate ver: libcdt4
No candidate ver: libcelt0-0
No candidate ver: libcheese-gtk21
No candidate ver: libcheese3
No candidate ver: libclutter-gst-1.0-0
No candidate ver: libclutter-imcontext-0.1-0
No candidate ver: libcluttergesture-0.0.2-0
No candidate ver: libcmis-0.2-0
No candidate ver: libcogl-pango0
No candidate ver: libcogl9
No candidate ver: libcupsdriver1
No candidate ver: libdconf-qt0
No candidate ver: libdconf0
No candidate ver: libdns81
No candidate ver: libdotconf1.0
No candidate ver: libdrm-nouveau1a
No candidate ver: libebackend-1.2-1
No candidate ver: libebook-1.2-12
No candidate ver: libecal-1.2-10
No candidate ver: libedata-book-1.2-11
No candidate ver: libedata-cal-1.2-13
No candidate ver: libedataserver-1.2-15
No candidate ver: libedataserverui-3.0-1
No candidate ver: libevince3-3
No candidate ver: libexiv2-11
No candidate ver: libexttextcat0
No candidate ver: libgd2-xpm
No candidate ver: libgdu-gtk0
No candidate ver: libgdu0
No candidate ver: libgegl-0.0-0
No candidate ver: libgexiv2-1
No candidate ver: libgjs0c
No candidate ver: libglew1.6
No candidate ver: libglewmx1.6
No candidate ver: libgnome-bluetooth8
No candidate ver: libgnome-desktop-3-2
No candidate ver: libgnome-menu2
No candidate ver: libgnomekbd7
No candidate ver: libgoa-1.0-0
No candidate ver: libgphoto2-2
No candidate ver: libgphoto2-port0
No candidate ver: libgrail5
No candidate ver: libgraph4
No candidate ver: libgtksourceview-3.0-0
No candidate ver: libgtkspell-3-0
No candidate ver: libgvc5
No candidate ver: libgweather-3-0
No candidate ver: libgwibber-gtk2
No candidate ver: libgwibber2
No candidate ver: libibus-1.0-0
No candidate ver: libical0
No candidate ver: libicu48
No candidate ver: libimobiledevice2
No candidate ver: libindicate-gtk3
No candidate ver: libindicate5
No candidate ver: libindicator-messages-status-provider1
No candidate ver: libisc83
No candidate ver: libisccc80
No candidate ver: libisccfg82
No candidate ver: libkpathsea5
No candidate ver: liblaunchpad-integration-3.0-1
No candidate ver: liblau...

[themusicgod1 (themusicgod1)]

dpkg.7 : the diff between a set of packages that *does not* exhibit this issue and one that does.

[themusicgod1 (themusicgod1)]

the list of packages that *does not* appear to give this issue: dpkg1

 (it gives another issue:
It was not possible to authenticate some packages. This may be a
transient network problem. You may want to try again later. See below
for a list of unauthenticated packages.

apt-transport-https
apt-utils
cups-filters-core-drivers
libcwidget3
libgl1-mesa-dri
libgomp1
libicu52
libopenexr6
libstdc++6
libtag1-vanilla
libtag1c2a
libxapian22
lshw
qpdf
)

[themusicgod1 (themusicgod1)]

You can remove all of those except libstdc++6 without issue. Looks like that may be a culprit.

[themusicgod1 (themusicgod1)]

Trying to take one step back, to install everything i had before it worked, results in:
makerspace@galois:~$ sudo apt-get install `cat dpkg1 | awk -F' ' '{print $2}'`
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'unity-gtk2-module' instead of 'appmenu-gtk'
Note, selecting 'unity-gtk3-module' instead of 'appmenu-gtk3'
Note, selecting 'poppler-data' instead of 'gs-cjk-resource'
Note, selecting 'ubuntu-drivers-common' instead of 'jockey-common'
Note, selecting 'ubuntu-drivers-common' instead of 'jockey-gtk'
Note, selecting 'libunity-core-6.0-9' instead of 'unity-common'
Package libdconf0 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However, the following packages replace it:
  dconf-service dconf-gsettings-backend

Package libebook-1.2-12 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libgdu0 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libindicator-messages-status-provider1 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However, the following packages replace it:
  indicator-messages

Package libcogl9 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libudev0 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

Package libevince3-3 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However, the following packages replace it:
  libevdocument3-4 libevview3-3

Package libgjs0c is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However, the following packages replace it:
  libgjs0e

Package libgnome-desktop-3-2 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However, the following packages replace it:
  libgnome-desktop-3-7

Package libgoa-1.0-0 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However, the following packages replace it:
  libgoa-1.0-common libgoa-1.0-0b

Package libgphoto2-2 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However, the following packages replace it:
  libgphoto2-l10n

Package libgtksourceview-3.0-0 is not avai...