How to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04.03

• Make a backup!!!!

• I assume you're the super user when you do this:

sudo do-release-upgrade

and that you upgraded all the packages that needed it before you started the do-release-upgrade process:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

• That being said, do-release-upgrade depends on python3. If you don't have python3 installed it will fail (and not just any python3 either…you have to install the correct python3…according to some Canonical mythology).

• do-release-upgrade will try to upgrade any snap-ins you have installed. If you don't have any snap-ins installed but have installed snapd, you need to remove it (and never, ever install it again):

sudo apt remove snapd
sudo apt autoremove     # removes any snapd dependencies...now unused

• I've also read that systemd needs to be running for do-release-upgrade to do it's job. Since Linux these days is little more than systemd and a bunch of poorly thought out and even more poorly developed/debugged/maintained/supported "services", it's hard to see how you can have a functional Linux system if systemd wasn't running. Still, you need to make sure…

• Finally, the solution that is not for the faint of heart (DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! DANGER!):

sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.orig   # makes a backup
sudo sed -i 's/bionic/focal/g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y dist-upgrade

• This is reason #42789 to not use Ubuntu… Flames to /dev/null…

-- sw

This is reason #42789 to not use Ubuntu… Flames to /dev/null…

I’ve always favoured Ubuntu’s pretty simple upgrade process (thanks to its Debian roots.)

It’s only fairly recently you’ve been able to upgrade between RHEL and CentOS releases. Prior to v7 (I think it was) you had to do a full re-install to go from v6-v7, for example.

I've tried every hack suggested without really understanding any of them. I think I'll stick on 18.0.4 for now and maybe consider building a whole new linode I'm frankly temped to move my app to Heroku am I'm not enjoying system administration as much as I thought I would.