Error upgrading Ubuntu server from Intrepid to Jaunty

I'm trying to upgrade an old ubuntu server from 8.10 (Intrepid) to 9.04 (Jaunty). But it fails.

root@server1:/# do-release-upgrade
Checking for a new ubuntu release
Failed Upgrade tool signature
Failed Upgrade tool
Done downloading
extracting 'jaunty.tar.gz'
Failed to extract
Extracting the upgrade failed. There may be a problem with the network or with the server.

Does anyone have an idea why I get this error and how to fix it?

UPDATE: I think i might have tracked the problem down.

My /etc/update-manager/meta-release looks like this:

[METARELEASE]

URI = http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release
URI_LTS = http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts
URI_UNSTABLE_POSTFIX = -development
URI_PROPOSED_POSTFIX = -proposed

If i go to http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release it has this info for Jaunty:

Dist: jaunty
Name: Jaunty Jackalope
Version: 9.04
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:00:00 UTC
Supported: 0
Description: This is the 9.04 release
Release-File: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/jaunty/Release
ReleaseNotes: http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/EOLReleaseAnnouncement
UpgradeTool: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/jaunty-proposed/main/dist-upgrader-all/0.111.8/jaunty.tar.gz
UpgradeToolSignature: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/jaunty-proposed/main/dist-upgrader-all/0.111.8/jaunty.tar.gz.gpg

Those links starting with archive.ubuntu.com are broken since jaunty is EOL.

I guess i could fix this by copying this file, replacing "archive" with "old-releases", host the modified file somewhere and change the url in the meta-release file. Is this a good solution or will it make me run into worse problems?

Solution 1:

8.10 and 9.04 are both unsupported, you'll want to keep going all the way up to 10.04.

Canonical maintains documentation on how to upgrade from a release after its repositories go dark here.

Add the following to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ intrepid-security main restricted universe multiverse

Update with the new repositories, and upgrade packages against the intrepid repository:

apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

Then you can use the release upgrade tool:

do-release-upgrade

Rinse and repeat, replacing intrepid with jaunty in the sources.list to be able to move up to 9.10. To move to 10.04 you shouldn't need to do manual modifications, as it looks like the karmic sources are still in the original location despite being past the end of support.

Solution 2:

Stuart,

I think the problem can be solved in a much simpler fashion without having to use another machine. Here is what I did:

Copied the old (incorrect) file from http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release to a local file (say) /etc/meta-release.rvg I modified /etc/meta-release.rvg so that "archive" was replaced by "old-releases"

Modified /etc/update-manager/meta-release so that it pointed to my local file rather than the incorrect URI on the ubuntu site - here is what it looked like after my change:

[METARELEASE]

URI = file:///etc/meta-release.rvg

URI_LTS = http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts

URI_UNSTABLE_POSTFIX = -development

URI_PROPOSED_POSTFIX = -proposed

I then ran do-release-upgrade and everything worked like a charm

Regards,

Rajendra Gokhale

Solution 3:

After coming across this problem again, I found an even easier answer: put this in the servers /etc/hosts file:

91.189.88.140 archive.ubuntu.com

the server isn't name based so you can point archive.ubuntu.com at old-releases and it works.

Note: Remember to remove the line from HOSTS when you're upgraded

Stu