After Upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04 - Failed to connect to https://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts. Check your Internet connection or proxy settings

[kaktux]

Ubuntu Version:
<24.04 LTS →

Desktop Environment (if applicable):
<none - server installation →

Problem Description:

Terminal upgrade of a ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04
After upgrade the error
“Failed to connect to https://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts. Check your Internet connection or proxy settings”
appears and pinging, update etc does not work.
connection via ssh works.

Relevant System Information:

qnap nas - virtual machine running dokuwiki.

Screenshots or Error Messages:

What I’ve Tried:

• restart/reboot
• sudo apt-get reinstall ubuntu-release-upgrader-core

so far nothing i tried worked.

[thingizkhan]

ssh works, so the VM’s NIC and IP are fine; what’s missing is DNS.
After the jump to 24.04 the old /etc/resolv.conf symlink often points at
now-vanished files, so everything that needs a hostname (ping, apt, the
update manager) fails while raw IP traffic still works.

Quick check

ping 1.1.1.1          # ← this should work
ping ubuntu.com       # ← this will time out
ls -l /etc/resolv.conf

If resolv.conf is not a symlink to /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf
(or is an empty file) you’ve found the culprit.

Fix in three commands

sudo rm -f /etc/resolv.conf
sudo ln -s /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
sudo systemctl restart systemd-resolved

Now try:

ping ubuntu.com
sudo apt update

Both should work, and do-release-upgrade / ubuntu-advantage will stop
complaining about changelogs.ubuntu.com.

(If you use a static DNS in Netplan, keep it there; systemd-resolved will
still publish those nameservers into /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf.)

[kaktux]

thx a lot - that did indeed made updates/ping possible again.

Only thing is - it doesn’t seem to save the solution - after rebooting it is back to the old error message.

[ogra]

How exactly did you do the upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04, the whole transition from resolvconf (which is obsoltete since many years now) to systemd-resolved should be handled by do-release-upgrade properly … i.e. resolvconf should be completely removed, systemd-resolved should be installed and started and said symlink should be put in place automatically …

The behavior you see clearly indicates either a bug in the upgrader (but then many more people would have complained about it by now) or some non-standard steps in your upgrade process …

[thingizkhan]

The fix vanished because something is still re-creating the old
/etc/resolv.conf at every boot. That “something” is almost always
the legacy resolvconf package, which 24.04 no longer uses.
Get rid of it once and the symlink will stay put.

# 1 – see if resolvconf is still around
dpkg -l resolvconf

# 2 – if it shows “ii” (installed), purge it
sudo apt purge resolvconf

# 3 – make sure the modern resolver is enabled
sudo systemctl enable --now systemd-resolved

# 4 – put the permanent symlink back
sudo ln -sf /run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

Reboot.
/etc/resolv.conf should still point at
/run/systemd/resolve/resolv.conf, DNS works, and the upgrader’s
meta-release check stops complaining.

---

Why did this happen at all?

A standard do-release-upgrade removes resolvconf and switches you
to systemd-resolved automatically.
If resolvconf was held back, manually re-installed, or the upgrade
was done with custom scripts, it can sneak back in and overwrite
/etc/resolv.conf on each boot.

Purging the package (or fixing whatever re-installs it) makes the fix
stick for good.

[kaktux]

• apt update
• apt upgrade
• apt autoremove
• reboot now
• do-release-upgrade

as some packages were hold back and i got the message "
Please install all available updates for your release before upgrading. "
i had to

• sudo apt full-upgrade
  after which
• do-release-upgrade
  worked.

During update i kept local files when asked and installed grub on all available options.

[thingizkhan]

Looks like everything is ok. Take care!

some packages were hold back: This is not a problem eventually they will be upgraded so you do not need to make anything else for now just make sure you are doing updates consistently.

[kaktux]

Thanks all for your help - this did solve the connection problem.

and just for info if others have the problem (and as reminder for myself).

Dokuwiki did not load because apache did not start properly -

• systemctl status apache2.service
  and

• systemctl status apache2.service

showed this.
Details about the error i found by going to

• cd /etc/apache2
  Then:

• apache2ctl configtest

With the appearing error message i was able to find out that Apache is configured to use PHP 8.1 but i have PHP 8.3.

That can be change via:

• sudo a2dismod php8.1
• sudo a2enmod php8.3
• sudo service apache2 restart

thx everyone for your help.

[rubi1200]

Please mark the relevant post as the solution.

It also helps the community when others are searching for fixes.

Thanks.