do-release-upgrade fails complaining of held broken packages that apt-get upgrade or dist-upgrade does not report

[Allan W. Macdonald]

I purged all ppas in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ (the directory is empty)
When I run "sudo apt-get --fix-missing upgrade" nothing happens

In any case, I can't figure this stuff out anyway - I need an expert to debug this!

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:18.04.42
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.3.0-7648.41~1586790036~18.04~600aeb5~dev-generic 5.3.18
Uname: Linux 5.3.0-7648-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.23
Architecture: amd64
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Mar 22 18:04:23 2021
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-08-24 (940 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20170215.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2021-03-22 (0 days ago)

[Allan W. Macdonald (allan-w-macdonald)]

FYI: I uninstalled a few more things and main.log seems to only have one error in it now.

[Allan W. Macdonald (allan-w-macdonald)]

Here is the accompanying apt.log

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

Bug reporting is mostly about finding & fixing problems thus preventing future users from hitting the same bug.

I suspect a Support site would be more appropriate, eg. https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu. You can also find help with your problem in the support forum of your local Ubuntu community http://loco.ubuntu.com/ or asking at https://askubuntu.com or https://ubuntuforums.org, or for more support options please look at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/community-support/709

[Allan W. Macdonald (allan-w-macdonald)]

@Chris:

Thank you for your suggestion; I will go to those sites and inquire further.

Nevertheless, when the release upgrade process was terminated, the terminal output did include the recommendation to "please report this bug." I presume that this recommendation was put there so that the maintainers may be able to identify potential issues that may correct this kind of behaviour in the future.

If I find from elsewhere that it was somehow my fault that this is happening, I will gladly return here to mark this bug as "Invalid" but, for now, I am assuming that this behaviour is due to some error in the software since the cause is not at all obvious. In any case, I am willing to defer the "nuclear option" (i.e. re-install the OS) until a definite cause of the issue can be found.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Reviewing the files from your upgrade attempt you seem to have enabled a PPA that provides Xorg packages. This will prevent the upgrade as that PPA contains package version numbers greater than the release to which you are upgrading. You can revert the PPA by installing the ppa-purge package from the official Ubuntu archive and then running 'sudo ppa-purge ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers'. After that you can try upgrading again and if it still fails open a new bug report. Thanks and good luck!