release upgrade from dapper to hardy possibly due to network error

[toecutter]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Background:

My server is running in hosting centre who offer a number of LINUX distro's.
For Ubuntu they only offer 6.06 LTS which has been imaged on to my server.
My connection is SSH via PuTTY and WinSCP

Problem:

I am attepting to upgrade to 8.04 following this document http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

I have carried out the following steps:

enable the "dapper-updates" repository

install the new "update-manager-core" package - dependencies include python-apt, python-gnupginterface and python2.4-apt.

run "do-release-upgrade -d" in a terminal window

The repository I added was:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper-updates main restricted

after which I did an update

when I run the do-release-upgrade -d I get the following errors:

Error during update

A problem occurred during the update. This is usually some sort of
network problem, please check your network connection and retry.

W:Failed to fetch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dis...6/Packages.bz2
Hash Sum mismatch
, W:Failed to fetch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dis...6/Packages.bz2
Hash Sum mismatch
, W:Failed to fetch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dis...ce/Sources.bz2
Hash Sum mismatch
, W:Failed to fetch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dis...ce/Sources.bz2
Hash Sum mismatch
, E:Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or
old ones used instead.

Restoring original system state

Aborting
Reading package lists: Done
Building dependency tree: Done
Building dependency tree: Done
Building dependency tree: Done

I was advised to not use the -d option as 8.04 has moved to main.
I re-imaged the server and ran the same procedure as above.

I now get the following error:

Invalid package information

After your package information was updated the essential package
'ubuntu-standard' can not be found anymore.
This indicates a serious error, please report this bug against the
'update-manager' package and include the files in
/var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport.

Restoring original system state

Aborting
Reading package lists: Done
Building dependency tree: Done
Building dependency tree: Done
Building dependency tree: Done

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

From main.log:

2008-08-11 21:15:03,917 DEBUG running doUpdate() (showErrors=True)
2008-08-11 21:15:06,515 ERROR No '%s' after sources.list rewrite+update

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

8.04 has reached end of life. Have you had this occur on 12.04 or later?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for update-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]