Hi, I missed the deadline to upgrade to 25.04 by 2 days
What are my options now?
When I try to upgrade I get “Your Ubuntu release is not supported anymore”.
I do not understand it… the repo is still there for 24.10. And 25.04 is live.
Why can’t I update?
I understand that 24.10 is not supported anymore but that should not prevent me from updating to the next supported version, should it?
Thanks for your help/suggestions
Welcome to Ubuntu Discourse
I moved your post to its own thread for better support.
Announcements is just that, not technical support.
Thanks.
If you don’t have 3rd part apps installed or apps from PPAs it will be enough to modify ‘by hand’ your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources.
If you are experienced enough in using the terminal it will be quite simple.
your /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources must become:
Types: deb
URIs: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu
Suites: plucky plucky-updates plucky-backports
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg
Types: deb
URIs: http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: plucky-security
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg
now is the same but with ‘oracular’ instead ‘plucky’
after this change you can run sudo apt update
Edit: if you are unsure about your situation post here the output from:
ls /etc/apt -hl
and
ls /etc/apt/sources.list.d -hl
Thanks for the help!
I have questions though
- Can I also do like what is suggested here (EOLUpgrades - Community Help Wiki) and use “old-releases.ubuntu.com” and keep oracular for the code name? I guess not as I see that “old-releases” does not have oracular yet…
- I have 3rd apps repos but I guess I can just disable them before I start the upgrade?
- If I make the edits you suggest, do I understand correctly that I just need to run a simple update/upgrade? Or do I still then need to run a " do-release-upgrade"?
No worries, the terminal and vi are my friends
I never used the method you link and 'm unsure about it because refers to the old sources.list format (before 24.04)
This is incorrect. Instructions to upgrade are at EOLUpgrades - Community Help Wiki.
We always want to be using do-release-upgrade
to do the upgrade because there are things called “quirks” that need to be done that simply changing the sources does not do.
Hi and thanks for your reply!
What do you recommend then?
Because in the link called “EOLUpgrades” we are both referring to, they are talking about “/etc/apt/sources.list” which is not in use anymore, and the format in “/etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources” is quite different from what the Wiki EOLUpgrade is talking about.
Not to mention that old-releases does not seem to have oracular yet…
I am very unsure what to do…
Would the simplest way out of my situation be to download 25.04, install it on a USB stick and upgrade my current system from there? Any risks doing that?
You want /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources
and change the URIs from archive
and security
to old-releases
:
Types: deb
- URIs: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
+ URIs: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: oracular oracular-updates oracular-backports
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg
Types: deb
- URIs: http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
+ URIs: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
Suites: oracular-security
Components: main restricted universe multiverse
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg
Thanks for that very clear info
So you think this will work already now every if oracular is not in old-releases?
I’ve actually used it to make sure releases even older than that get upgraded and can be upgraded to newer versions.
No, you’re right, it won’t work. You’re still in the grace period where you should be able to do a normal upgrade. As you can see, as of this writing, it’s still in archives
: Index of /ubuntu/dists/oracular
Any other suggestions then? Because I am clearly getting the error message quoted above, and I tried with several repos, not only the main archive.ubuntu.com one…
Yes this is why I am so baffled. Makes no sense.
Hmm… I think the release team may have missed a checklist item. Unfortunately, they’re all out for the weekend. I’d wait until at least Monday. I have the feeling they just haven’t moved it to old-releases yet.
Can it be a special problem linked to Ubuntu Mate, which is the distro I am using?
But good idea, I will wait a bit
Nah. Ubuntu MATE is Ubuntu. Same repo, not a different distro. Just a flavor.
The Ubuntu Release Upgrader tools do more than just change sources; as changes that occur (such as the still somewhat recent sources change; from /etc/apt/sources.list
to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ubuntu.sources
would be missed; ie. once off changes that are specific to Ubuntu), thus using what I consider a Debian method of release-upgrade requires an additional amount of homework to manually do the other changes that occur for the specific release upgrade you’re doing.
Either way, the Ubuntu 24.10 EOL on just happened, thus I’d expect normal release-upgrade procedures to still apply without change; have you tried??
The notices (e.g. Ubuntu 24.10 (Oracular Oriole) reached End of Life on 10th July 2025) include the text
We’re only days past the EOL, not weeks, so I’d expect the upgrade instructions (eg. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PluckyUpgrades) to work without anything extra required for now, but extra steps will be required soon…
FYI: The extra steps include the change from archive to old-releases; which isn’t required yet… though mirrors are free to drop support for an EOL anytime, so if using a mirror you may need to change already…
Note: What I’ve put here doesn’t fully apply due to some out-of-order steps (I wasn’t aware of); I’ve opted to leave the post here, but its far from accurate/complete due to out-of-order steps, and is still being done (to resolve) on oracular-plucky upgrade process; Staff Notice added. Thanks @eeickmeyer
sorry, I’ve always edited sources.list to upgrade when a new version comes out and I’ve had no problems.
Hi all,
Apologies, the SRE had to archive the apt archive to old-releases and it should’ve been smooth from there. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and now we’re here. But hey, lessons learned.
For the meantime, I’ve revert the meta-release (don’t worry, if you don’t know what that is) and flipped Oracular to supported again. I think, I think, everything should be fine now?
Let me know on Ubuntu Release Matrix room if it isn’t.
Thanks,
Utkarsh