How To Upgrade Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) To 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) (Desktop & Server)

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Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
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Last edited 04/30/2010

Yesterday the new Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) was released. This guide shows how you can upgrade your Ubuntu 9.10 desktop and server installations to Ubuntu 10.04.

This document comes without warranty of any kind! I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Desktop

Start the Update Manager (System > Administration > Update Manager):

The Update Manager should show that a new distribution release (10.04 LTS) is available. Click the Upgrade button to start the distribution upgrade:

A window with the release notes for 10.04 comes up. Click Upgrade again:

The upgrade tool is now being downloaded.

Afterwards, type in your password:

The upgrade is being prepared:

You might see a note that support for some applications ended. Click Close:

Click Start Upgrade to finally begin with the upgrade process:

The upgrade packages are now being downloaded...

... and installed. This can take some time, so please be patient.

You might see the following message (Continue without installing GRUB?). I had to check the checkbox because otherwise clicking the Forward button had no effect (i.e., the window did not close and the upgrade did not continue). As I understand it this means that the system will continue to use the old boot loader.

At the end of the upgrade process, you should remove obsolete packages:

The system needs to be rebooted to complete the upgrade, therefore click Restart Now:

After the reboot, you can use your new Ubuntu 10.04 desktop:

2 Server

First become root:

sudo su

Then run

aptitude update

and install the package update-manager-core:

aptitude install update-manager-core

Open the file /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades...

vi /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

... and make sure it has Prompt=normal in it:

[...]
Prompt=normal

Then run

do-release-upgrade

to start the distribution upgrade.

root@server1:~# do-release-upgrade
Checking for a new ubuntu release
Done Upgrade tool signature
Done Upgrade tool
Done downloading
extracting 'lucid.tar.gz'
authenticate 'lucid.tar.gz' against 'lucid.tar.gz.gpg'
tar: Removing leading `/' from member names

Reading cache

Checking package manager

Continue running under SSH?

This session appears to be running under ssh. It is not recommended
to perform a upgrade over ssh currently because in case of failure it
is harder to recover.

If you continue, an additional ssh daemon will be started at port
'9004'.
Do you want to continue?

Continue [yN] <-- y

Confirm that you want to do the upgrade:

Do you want to start the upgrade?


4 packages are going to be removed. 46 new packages are going to be
installed. 429 packages are going to be upgraded.

You have to download a total of 228M. This download will take about 2
minutes with your connection.

Fetching and installing the upgrade can take several hours. Once the
download has finished, the process cannot be cancelled.

 Continue [yN]  Details [d] <-- y

You might see the following message (Continue without installing GRUB?). Like in the desktop upgrade, I had to answer Yes. As I understand it this means that the system will continue to use the old boot loader.

Continue without installing GRUB? <-- Yes

At the end of the upgrade process, you should remove obsolete packages:

Remove obsolete packages?


44 packages are going to be removed.

 Continue [yN]  Details [d] <-- y

The server needs to be rebooted to complete the upgrade:

System upgrade is complete.

Restart required

To finish the upgrade, a restart is required.
If you select 'y' the system will be restarted.

Continue [yN] <-- y

After the reboot, your server is running Ubuntu 10.04.

3 Links

• Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/