Ubuntu Version:
Kubuntu 23.10
Desktop Environment (if applicable):
KDE
Problem Description:
I cannot upgrade my system through any method that I have tried.
When I boot the system and log in, I get a pop-up telling me that an upgrade is available. When I click on it to start the upgrade, nothing happens and eventually it aborts. The window says it has an error, but there is no information in there.
If I try “sudo apt full-upgrade”, it fails to fetch quite a few packages and then fails the upgrade.
This suggests “sudo apt --fix-missing”, but this exits with only a description of how to use apt (suggesting the suggested syntax is wrong).
If I do “sudo apt upgrade”, it throws the same issue as “sudo apt full-upgrade”, and aborts.
If I do “sudo apt update”, I get messages telling me that the repository mantic no longer has a release file (along with mantic-updates, mantic-security, and mantic-backports).
Relevant System Information:
amd64, 16gb RAM, quad core intel.
Screenshots or Error Messages:
What I’ve Tried:
Ubuntu 23.10 (thus all flavors including Kubuntu) is End of Life, thus its more complex.
Have you followed the procedures provided in EOLUpgrades - Community Help Wiki
The End of Life notices (eg. Ubuntu Fridge | Ubuntu 23.10 (Mantic Minotaur) reached End of Life on July 11, 2024) stated
No more package updates will be accepted to 23.10, and it will be archived to old-releases.ubuntu.com in the coming weeks.
which mandates the extra steps, which are covered in the EOLUpgrades link.
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Hey there and welcome to Ubuntu Discourse, but I have to say @guiverc is correct.
If you cannot install anything on that version, try upgrade it with sudo do-release-upgrade to see that helps. Or use sudo update-manager and click on “continue” and “upgrade” to upgrade it to 24.04 LTS.
If you can’t install anything on 23.10, that’s because of its repository is no longer available in Ubuntu archive, but now available in Ubuntu Old releases site due to be out of support, this is normal thing.
You can find out in Ask Ubuntu site in here since it’s related to your topic in Ubuntu Discourse.
Thank you for the quick replies!
Using the edits to the sources that were suggested, I was able to start the upgrade. Unfortunately it has been pretty well a complete disaster since that. It started the upgrade and was taking a while, which was not a surprise.
I went back to my system after letting it sit for a couple hours and found an odd message telling me “The screen locker is broken and unlocking is not possible anymore”. I went into a virtual terminal (ctrl-alt-F1) as instructed but was not able to log in to said virtual terminal; it was hung up on an APCI error. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-Z, etc did not get me around that error, I was stuck there. At that point I went ahead and rebooted (ctrl-alt-del). Since then I have yet to succeed in booting my system at all. If I go to “advanced options for Ubuntu 23.10” in GRUB I can pick from “Ubuntu”, or regular or recovery modes for either kernel 6.5.0-44-generic or 6.5.0-42-generic, but only the recovery modes ever complete booting. The other modes will try to boot and eventually hang on an APCI error.
Is there an option other than formatting and starting over? I have quite a bit of data in my home directory - which is backed up elsewhere on my network but I’d rather not have to deal with the headache that is recovery - so I’d prefer to find a way to complete this upgrade if possible.
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Well - maybe hope
As you can boot in the recovery mode -
One here can try;
network - enable networking
root - to drop to a root shell prompt.
In this shell what results now:
apt update
apt full-upgrade
depending on what results is what to do next on.
-Maybe Yes-
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Firstly I’d ensure you have good backups of your data… It’s easy to make a mistake; so at least feel confident that if you needed to start again, you’re capable of starting again & restoring data from whatever backup strategy you’re using.
I’ll provide a link to an answer I’ve written on the askubuntu site (https://askubuntu.com/questions/446102/how-to-reinstall-ubuntu-in-the-easiest-way/1451533#1451533) which maybe worth considering !
Kubuntu uses the calamares installer which has no forced format (ISOs using ubuntu-desktop-installer does due to an issue with ubuntu-desktop-provision currently) so a non-destructive re-install should be available. If you’ve got a seperate /home partition then part of this will be possible using ubuntu-desktop-installer ISOs too.
FYI: The system I’m using now is dual boot; whilst I’m using my development release (currently plucky) as I am most of the time, my dual boot install runs 24.04 or noble, and was non-destructively re-installed twice last month due to a problem I was having and getting nowhere. I sure ensured my data was backed up, but didn’t need to restore any data; despite my system being a single-partition install too (but ensure you have a good backup; as its easy to make mistakes!)
As for your issue; the screen locker being broken implies to me you didn’t follow documented procedures correctly; as if you were doing a release-upgrade (your details were vague, and thus I may have misinterpreted what you were doing) this can be expected thus the mitigations/procedures documented so its not a problem. Switching to text terminal should have allowed you to get around a locked screen locker though I suspect.
What I’ve provided is an alternative; I’d try and FIX your system first ( @bashing-om attempts to provide some support in that regard )
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Wish there’s a smoother way to upgrade EOL distros to latest supported LTS, especially for users who aren’t comfortable doing all that work.
I have an ansible script to upgrade from one version to another, that essentially just swaps out the repo versions, and upgrades in stages (created to avoid the prompts). I mainly use that at work since we were in 20.04 for a long time & HP Anyware only supports 22.04 for now (although I have a workaround for 24.04).