Upgrading 8.04 Server -> 8.10

Ubuntu 8.04 is a Long Term Support (LTS) release. This implies that automatic upgrades to later releases are supressed in favour of having a stable system.

If one wants to upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 (server edition) one has to edit the file

/etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

Search for the string:

Prompt=lts

and change it to:

Prompt=normal

(as described in the comments of the file). Now you should be able to run the upgrade utility:

sudo do-release-upgrade

This will start the upgrade process.

If you have followed previous hints on upgrade in this blog, you might have the upgrade-manager-core utility installed on your system (which includes do-release-upgrade). If not, you have to install it with sudo apt-get --install.

Upgrade takes approximately 20 mins on my server and requires a reboot to finalize the installation process.