Can't upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10 to latest version

Question

I'm using Ubuntu 10.10. I want to upgrade it to the latest version but I'm just unable to do so. When I press Alt+F2 and write

upgrade-manager-c-d

and run it, it says

Error stating file '/home/ann/upgrade-manager- c-d': No such file or directory`

What should I do?

Solution

You're misspelling the command (and also passing flags to it incorrectly).

Don't run upgrade-manager-c-d. Either:

• Run update-manager -c -d instead, if you want to perform the upgrade with a graphical utility. (This is probably what you want.) That is, the command contains the word update rather than upgrade, and spaces before the dashes are required. Or
• run do-release-upgrade -d instead, if you want to perform the upgrade entirely from the command line.

^{(There are two main causes of confusion surrounding when spaces have to be used in commands, in Ubuntu. You might have intended to type the command with spaces; that is, it might a typo. Or you may be used to Windows, where command-line flags starting with / needn't be preceded by a space. For example, dir/s and dir /s have the same effect, on the Windows command prompt. In Ubuntu, flags starting with - do need to be preceded by whitespace.)}

Also, it is odd that it looked for the command in your home directory. This suggests you may be starting the command with something like ./, that is, that you may be running, ./update-manager. Basically the only time you need to start a command with ./ is when you are deliberately attempting to execute a file you know is located in you current directory and not provided as part of Ubuntu.

Since Ubuntu 10.10 is end-of-life (and has been for some time), you will probably need to follow these instructions before attempting the upgrade:

• How to install software or upgrade from an old unsupported release?

That explains how to add the old-releases software sources. Since 10.10 is so old, you may need to perform multiple upgrades: 12.04 is the lowest release with current desktop support.

• 10.10 → 11.04 → 11.10 → 12.04.

Once you get to 12.04, you can upgrade to 14.04 directly (if you wish), since 12.04 and 14.04 are both LTS releases. Or you can stay with 12.04--because it is an Long Term Support release, it won't go end-of-life until April 2017.

Especially if your Ubuntu system is only lightly used and lightly customized, you might prefer to reinstall than to perform multiple upgrades. You should of course always have backups made of documents and other important files, but if you decide to reinstall Ubuntu, it's especially important that such backups exist and are current.

Comments

[Annie]

upgrade-manager-c-d was given in the help section.

[Annie]

Are you sure re-installation is the only solution left?

[Annie]

Seems like i've gotten my answer. Thank you all for the help.

[david6]

Agree with jmiserez. First backup your data, take note of any applications settings; and check you have all passwords, settings, etc. recorded somewhere. Then do a new install of 14.04.1. If you only have 2GB (or less) of RAM, user 32-bit.