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Recently I had to install some new packages in my server, but the version of Ubuntu (10.10-maverick) is not supported anymore. So, when I tried with apt-get update, I got lots of 404 not found messages.

I didn't know I could change the sources.list using the old-releases addresses, so I changed my sources.list with the repositories in the next newer supported version (11.10).

I executed apt-get update, and it worked. Then I installed the new packages without problems. I could see some of the old packages (like libc, perl, etc) were updated too.

Until now, everything seems to work fine, but I don't know if this solution can give problems in the future. I'm a little afraid about this, because the server is on production and many people depend on the services on it. I don't want to install new packages using the new sources.list if I am going to get problems of libraries or similar.

Can you help me? Thanks in advance.

Jorge Castro
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Jean Michel
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4 Answers4

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The correct way to upgrade an Ubuntu system to the next release is using do-release-upgrade. That tool downloads a set of upgrade scripts, different for each Ubuntu release, that will not just update your sources.list, but also tune some settings.

You said that you were on Maverick and then you skipped to Oneiric. This means that you have not run the Natty and Oneiric script sets. They are:

You can download and extract these two tarballs and examine the content, looking at the actions that the scripts would have performed. Note that you will find some uninteresting scripts, for example the Nvidia-related scripts (which, on a server, do not need to be run). It's safe to skip them.

Once you have identified the scripts that would have run if you did the upgrade correctly, you can try performing the actions of that scripts. Examining the scripts can also help you detect the potential problems that your upgrade may have introduced.

By the way, do test your server's services deeply. This is the only way to know for sure if everything works correctly. If everything works, then you don't have to worry (obviously, this sentence is true only if you have performed accurate and complete tests).

Finally, I'd like to point you to the answer of this question: How to install software or upgrade from old unsupported release?. It's too late to apply the procedures described there, however the next time you'll know what to do.

Community
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Andrea Corbellini
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If you do a sudo apt-get upgrade or sudo apt-get dist-upgrade now it will pull all the new packages from 11.10, essentially upgrading you to 11.10.

reverendj1
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Ubuntu packages, unlike windows probably, run only specific versions only. For example, a package(an application) "made for" Ubuntu 10.04 will run only on 10.04 without hiccups. If you try to install this package on 11.10 or any higher or lower version, it may run but can cause dependency and likewise other errors. Therefore, it is recommended that you either upgrade to another LTS version, since your system is very much busy and can't be frequently upgraded or less recommended, continue using your old Ubuntu without updating and hence upgrading the packages. Installing packages belonging to a different version by modifying sources.list is, on my part, asking for trouble.

jobin
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I think I just made it by replacing some lines on repositories list /etc/apt/sources.list: it seems the server is not called archives.ubuntu.com but old-releases.ubuntu.com. I just replaced all the archives. entries by old-releases. leaving the rest as is. I also deleted us. entries.

Hope it works for you too.

Glutanimate
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zazura
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