I have recently had to upgrade an old Edgy server and was unable to
find any information on how to do that.
The first thing I learned was that when Ubuntu releases are EOLed their
repositories are moved. This does not seem to be prominently documented
nor particularly helpful.
The second thing I learned was that the repositories still exist at
old-releases.ubuntu.com.
It was suggested that you could upgrade from a CD. That may be possible
but the first thing the automated routine tries is to make sure the old
distribution is completely up to date. That fails because the
repositories are no longer there.
I was able to successfully upgrade by editing /etc/apt/sources.list and
substituting "old-releases" for "us-archive" and "security". The update
can then proceed, either by the graphic utility or by apt-get. If more
than one old release upgrade is needed then you can continue normally,
until you get to last release in old-releases, currently Edgy, soon
Feisty is likely to join it.
Once the system is up to the final "old-release", it is necessary to
re-edit the /etc/apt/sources.list again and replace "old-releases" with
"us-archive" or "security" again as appropriate. You could of course
keep a copy of the original file just in case. You also have to change
the name of the dist, in my case from "edgy" to "fiesty"
The Graphic Upgrade may or may not work. In my case it still tried to
check that the current release is up to date. "apt-get dist-upgrade"
will work, although it may not work completely, so be sure your system
is completely up to date before going further.
At this point you can continue normally with upgrades to get to the
final release you want.
I didn't keep track of the exact steps necessary, so I can't report
them accurately. In any case I think the will vary depending on the
specific situation.
I hope this might help people caught in my situation.
--
Robert
Steinmetz, AIA
Principal
Steinmetz
& Associates
Attachment: rob.vcf (zipped)