Upgrade Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) To 10.04 (Lucid Lynx)

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.