update-manager insists on updating from 14.04 to 15.04 when this is not possible. It fails every time. It should suggest 14.10 as the upgrade path.

[Lennart Rolland]

I have summarized my problem in detail with screenshots here:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/725547/i-am-recommended-to-upgrade-from-14-04-to-15-04-but-it-fails

My ubuntu 14.04 amd64 continuously nags me about upgrading, but suggests an invalid upgrade path. The only possible upgrade path from 14.04 is via 14.10 but it suggests the invalid 15.04 instead as the next release. Every time I start the upgrade it fails promtly and since I have found no option to override which release to upgrade to I am effectively stuck on 14.04.

So work-around would be a way to tell update-manager that I want to spesifically upgrade to 14.10 but I don't know how this can be done. (or fixing the bug that causes it to think that 15.04 is the best release to upgrade to).

I have done the following while trying to fix this:

sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude upgrade
sudo aptitude dist-upgrade
sudo aptitude clean
sudo aptitude purge update-manager
sudo aptitude install update-manager

commented out all PPAs and old/legacy software sources

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:0.220.8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-76.120-generic 3.13.11-ckt30
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-76-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.19
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Jan 26 00:09:55 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-07-14 (1290 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
Symptom: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2014-10-08 (474 days ago)
VarLogDistupgradeTermlog:

mtime.conffile..etc.update.manager.release.upgrades: 2015-10-28T23:04:02.014699

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

"The only possible upgrade path from 14.04 is via 14.10" - this is not the case as the release upgrade process has been modified to skip over releases that have reached an End of Life, like 14.10 has. That being said there is currently a failure to calculate the upgrade from 14.04 to 15.04 as documented in bug 1534374.

The release upgrade process will not be modified to support upgrading to End of Life releases as it is likely they have not received security updates for critical issues.

[Lennart Rolland (lennartrolland)]

@Brian Murray: Thank you for pointing us to the exiosting bug report! Also, I understand your judgement, but I would like to comment on it. While it might be a bad idea to suggest to users they should select an upgrade path that may land them in a release that is not well supported or deemed insecure , it is my humble opinion that there should at least be an override switch for those that "know what they are doing"™ as is the way for Linux/Unix.

Implementing this with a big fat warning should not take a lot of effort. Simply a switch "do-release-upgrade --override 14.10" with a message "WARNING: THIS IS NOT SUPPORTED: <lots of good reasons> Would you like to continue? [y/N]".

Thanks!