I just wanted to share the steps to upgrade an Ubuntu server running on 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) to the new version 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron). The “official upgrade path” explained at Ubuntu did not work for me – and maybe some other of you also run into the same problems 😉

Some warnings before you start: Back up your system! The following steps are only recommended for those, who know what they do with their command line terminal. And everything you do – you do it on your own risk!

  • Problem 1: I use apt-get instead of aptitude … but you should not use both systems at the same time!
  • Solution: You can just use apt-get instead of aptitude. So the commands are:

    $ sudo apt-get update
    $ sudo apt-get upgrade
    $ sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
    $ sudo do-release-upgrade

    Be sure NOT to restart at the end of the upgrade … see problem 3 why!
  • Problem 2: The do-release-upgrade script starts but aborts by telling me that I don’t have enough diskspace on my boot-partition:

    The upgrade aborts now. The upgrade needs a total of 52.4M free space on disk '/boot'. Please free at least an additional 18.1M of disk space on '/boot'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean'.
  • Solution: Start to clean up your packages by using the suggested command:

    $ sudo apt-get clean

    … but this was not enough on my server. So I figured out that I have a bunch of old kernel versions on the boot partition – which also can be removed. Check which kernel versions are installed by using the following command:

    $ dpkg -l | grep linux-image

    In my case, I was able to delete the old linux-image-2.6.15-29 and the linux-image-2.6.17-12. Be sure to keep at least the Gutsy Gibbon version!

    $ sudo apt-get remove --purge linux-image-2.6.15*
    $ sudo apt-get remove --purge linux-image-2.6.17*

    Then you need to update your menu.lst:

    $ sudo update-grub

    After doing this I check the kernel list file by looking into the file with the vi-editor:

    $ sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

    If everything looks right within the automatic kernel list at the end of the file I go on.
  • Problem 3: The Ubuntu-geeks solved thisone themselves, but when I upgraded from Feisty Fawn to Gutsy Gibbon, I ran into big trouble: The do-release-upgrade functioned well, but when I restarted the server it did not boot properly anymore! The kernel list was not setup properly by the do-release -upgrade script!
  • Solution: Therefor I always finish the do-release-upgrade script without restarting the server;
    then I re-update the menu.lst by

    $ sudo update-grub

    after doing this I check the kernel list file by looking into the file with the vi-editor:

    $ sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

    If everything looks right within the automatic kernel list at the end of the file.

    $ sudo restart

When you are finished with the upgrade and restarted your server … you should be able to access the server again via ssh. Then you can check the version of the installed linux version by typing:

$ lsb_release -a

The result should look like this ;-):

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 8.04
Release: 8.04
Codename: hardy

I hope this howto / problem solving saves some time for you 😉

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