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Upgrading from Ubuntu 8.04 to Ubuntu 10.04

Asked by maria elena guzman

Can I upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to Ubuntu 10.04?

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Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#1

No, a direct upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to 10.04 is not possible. I recommend doing a clean install of Ubuntu 10.04 from the LiveCD session. First test all functionality (wireless, sound, etc....) in the LiveCD session before installing. Make sure to NOT delete (and do NOT format) the partition containing your /home partition.

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Vu Do Quynh (vu-do-quynh) said : 		#2

Hi,

Sorry to cntradict. It is possible to do a direct upgrade from 8.04 LTS to 10.04 LTS and it is written in the official documentation, I think.

I actually done one such upgrading myself.

What you need to do is

1) To check with a live CD that everything works well with 10.04 LTS.
2) Fully update your Ubuntu 8.04 LTS and then you can do the upgrade. You may use the Ubuntu 10.04 alternate CD to limit the download of packages from internet.
3) Backup essential data in case of problems.

However the upgrading process could effectively get you into "problems" as Mark suggested, especially if you have been using a lot of tertiary packages not officially supported by Ubuntu. These packages may create some dependency problems resulting in a finished installation but with some broken packages (especially flashplugin-nonfree caused me some problems).

Thus, if you can do a fresh install, it will be better. reinstalling packages is not a big problem, unless you have some strong reasons not to do a fresh install, eg when you have a lot of different users's data and not a separate /home (the fresh install will wipe out everything).

Hope that helps.

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Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#3

My apologies.

According to the following document, it is possible:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LucidUpgrades

But I still recommend doing a clean install, as it should give less problems (on average) than an upgrade between LTS releases.

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Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#4

I have to correct Vu Do Quynh (now we are even :-p) on one thing.

He says the fresh install will wipe out everything. That is not necessarily true. When installing 10.04 from the LiveCD session, during the MANUAL partitioning process, you can choose to NOT format the partition that contains the /home directory. Even if the /home directory is on the same partition as the / (root) directory, you can choose to NOT format that partition. In that case, it will only remove system files and system directories, keeping the /home directory and subdirectories intact. But it is even better to keep the /home directory on a separate partition!

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Vu Do Quynh (vu-do-quynh) said : 		#5

Hi,

Yeah. I hesitated a little bit when saying that a fresh install would wipe out everything (this is because I use to always format the "/" partition. I never tried not to format / when doing a fresh install).

This is quite interesting and I will try to do such an install on a test computer.
I am wondering if the /etc*apsswd, /etc/group and /etc/shadow files would be overwritten or not, in case of which they should be backed up prior the fresh install (to recover the password etc. of other users on the computer).

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maria elena guzman (gabeles) said : 		#6

I really appreciate your help.

English writing is not a simple task for me.

How can I identify the partition that contains the home/ directory?

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Best Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#7

Very good question.

In order to answer that one, I will give 2 examples.

The first example is one where you only have one partition that contains both the /home and / (root) partition.

Using the mount command in a Terminal in Ubuntu 8.04, you can see which partitions are mapped to which mount points (=specific subdirectories in your filesystem):

In the example below, the partition /dev/sda5 is mapped to the root (/) directory. In the mount list below, there is no other partition defined that could be linked to /home. So /dev/sda5 is linked to the / directory which contains your /home partition. In this case, /home is a subdirectory of the root directory (/) which are both on the same partition.
So in this case, make sure the manual partitioner does NOT format the /dev/sda5 partition!

$ mount
/dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/dev/sda1 on /media/sda1 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
/dev/sda2 on /media/sda2 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
/dev/sda3 on /media/sda3 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
$

In the next example, you have a separate partition for the / and /home directories:

As you can see, there is a separate partition called /dev/sda6 that is specifically linked to your /home directory. So in this case, make sure the manual partitioner does NOT format the /dev/sda6 partition!

$ mount
/dev/sda5 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sda6 on /home type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys type sysfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw)
none on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
none on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,mode=0755)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
none on /var/run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
none on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev)
none on /lib/init/rw type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,mode=0755)
/dev/sda1 on /media/sda1 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
/dev/sda2 on /media/sda2 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
/dev/sda3 on /media/sda3 type fuseblk (rw,nosuid,nodev,allow_other,blksize=4096,default_permissions)
$

I hope this is clear enough..... Write down (on a piece of paper) the info that mount provides. Use that info when using the custom partitioning feature of the LiveCD (= Ubuntu desktop bootCD)

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maria elena guzman (gabeles) said : 		#8

Well.

I did a clean install in the same computer. It was very easy and very fast.

But now in the Master Boot Record the option of Windows Vista as SO simply dissapear.

Shows something like this:

Ubuntu 10.04
Ubuntu 10.04 (recovery mode)
Ubuntu 8.04
Ubuntu 8.04 (recovery mode)
Mem test
Mem test
Windows Vista (recovery mode)

How can I fix it? Thank you very much for your time.

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Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#9

Please create a new thread for this new question using this link:

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion

I think your original question has been fully answered....

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maria elena guzman (gabeles) said : 		#10

Thanks Mark Rijckenberg, that solved my question.