do-release-upgrade crashed gnome-terminal crashing release upgrade

[whitis]

# was running 18.04.something
# upgrading to 20.04.5
# gnome-terminal
sudo do-release-upgrade
# says there is a new config file, that has already been edited, for speech dispatcher
# attempt to open new tab in gnome terminal so I can compare existing edited file to its original version which dpkg wont do for me.
# gnome terminal crashes, can't launch another one because release upgrade has been broken
# do-release-upgrade process is dead because its terminal died
# do-release-upgrade has no restart
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
# was able to resume at least this part of install
sudo apt-get autoremove # ?
# eventually dies because issues with cqrlog.
#cant uninstall cqrlog, says it is a bad inconsistent state, must reinstall. Can't reinstall.
# install/remove scripts keep crashing
dpkg -r --force-remove-reinstall cqrlog
# fails
# etc.

So now apt-is completely broken, usual remedies don't work

Even if we could get apt to finish the dist-upgrade and autoremove, anything do-release-uprade might have done would still not get done. do-release-upgrade should be able to resume like apt did. And apt probably would have succeeded if it wasn't for the buggy scripts for cqrlog that failed where many other packages succeeded.

Doing this on a legally blind friend's laptop. will now have to reinstall from scratch.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:20.04.39
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-197.208-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-197-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.25
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Thu Nov 24 22:35:30 2022
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-03-31 (1335 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180426)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2022-11-25 (0 days ago)