(Moved from stackoverflow.com)
I have a computer running the old Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
.
As well as 8.04
, the next LTS version, 10.04
is also no longer supported.
There is no published path of direct upgrade from 8.04 -> 12.04
.
There is published a path from 8.04 -> 10.04
and thence a path from 10.04 -> 12.04
If I try the standard normal upgrade instruction, I get an error with Python. Ubuntu 8.04
comes with Python 2.5
. In this error message, "Precise" is the nickname of Ubuntu 12.04
.
stewart@old-ubuntu-box:~$ sudo do-release-upgrade
Checking for a new ubuntu release
Done Upgrade tool signature
Done Upgrade tool
Done downloading
authenticate 'precise.tar.gz' against 'precise.tar.gz.gpg'
extracting 'precise.tar.gz'
/tmp/tmpwfCGnZ/DistUpgradeMain.py:102: Warning: 'with' will become a reserved keyword in Python 2.6
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/tmp/tmpwfCGnZ/precise", line 3, in <module>
from DistUpgradeMain import main
File "/tmp/tmpwfCGnZ/DistUpgradeMain.py", line 102
with open(fname, "a"):
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
If I try to upgrade Python to 2.6
or 2.7
, to support running of the upgrade, I find dependency problems because I'm still only on 8.04
.
stewart@old-ubuntu-box:~$ sudo apt-get install python2.6
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies.
python2.6: Depends: python2.6-minimal (= 2.6.5-1ubuntu7~lts1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.11) but 2.7-10ubuntu8.3 is to be installed
Depends: libdb4.8 but it is not installable
Depends: libreadline6 (>= 6.0) but it is not installable
Depends: libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.6.22) but 3.4.2-2 is to be installed
E: Broken packages
It's a circular catch-22. Ideally, I should be able to install the correct versions of these broken dependencies (libc6
, etc), but chasing down how to do this for an unsupported release has been elusive.
Any suggestions how to escape / tackle this?
Update:
I've managed to upgrade Python using make install
from instructions found here, however, the Python error upon do-release-upgrade
is identical.