While you can run do-release-upgrade to bring your Ubuntu system to the latest, it is not typically recommended to do it this way, as many things tend to break in the inline upgrade process. In particular, the switch to Ubuntu 17.10+ brings about a change in the way networking works, specifically that interfaces are now configured using a tool called netplan. In my experience, the direct upgrade path to this new system most commonly results in a broken configuration, with a lot of troubleshooting to correct the issues.

There is no upgrade path that is specific to Linode, however the generally recommended way to upgrade an Ubuntu installation is to spin up another server, deploy the latest OS/run any available updates, configure your services, and then migrate your data over using any of a number of different file transfer methods. Once this is finished, you can then swap IP addresses directly between them by following the instructions in our guide. This way, you can have no downtime, as you do not have to wait for DNS records to propagate to a new IP address (this, of course, is dependent upon proper configuration of the new Linode).

It is also worth noting that the Linodes will both need to be in the same datacenter in order to swap IP addresses between them. Once you have confirmed that the new Linode is working correctly, you can delete the old one to prevent further billing.

Will Linode Network Helper not bypass the issues related to the problems of Ubuntu's 17.10+ netplan ?

Generated by Linode Network Helper

Mon Feb 25 22:40:38 2019 UTC

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This file is automatically generated on each boot with your Linode's

current network configuration. If you need to modify this file, please

first disable the 'Auto-configure Networking' setting within your Linode's

configuration profile:

- https://manager.linode.com/linodes/config/poseidon?id=5405314

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For more information on Network Helper:

- https://www.linode.com/docs/platform/network-helper