How-To: Upgrade Ubuntu 23.04 to 24.10
Oracular Oriole
I reliased one of my Raspberry Pi systems was installed with Ubuntu 23.04 - it’s not an LTS release and is therefore end of life. It’s considered to be old enough that it can’t even be upgraded to 23.10 or 24.10 - the current Ubuntu LTS release.
Luckily, not all is lost - it’s often possible to upgrade Ubuntu, even on a system that’s not an LTS release.
Ubuntu Upgrade to a Specific Release
Although the most common way of upgrading Ubuntu is to use the do-release-upgrade command, sometimes your current release is so old that you can’t use the command:
An option you can then try is this: download release-specific upgrader yourself and run it manually.
You need to pick a release from the list of available releases on the meta-release page:
Specifically, you need to pick the next release up from the one you’re currently on.
Since 23.04 on my Raspberry Pi system is Lunar Lobster, I browsed the page above until I arrived at the 23.10 section, which is Mantic Minotaur:
Dist: mantic
Name: Mantic Minotaur
Version: 23.10
Date: Thu, 12 October 2023 23:10:00 UTC
Supported: 0
Description: This is the 23.10 release
Release-File: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/mantic-updates/Release
ReleaseNotes: http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/EOLReleaseAnnouncement
UpgradeTool: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/mantic-updates/main/dist-upgrader-all/current/mantic.tar.gz
UpgradeToolSignature: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/mantic-updates/main/dist-upgrader-all/current/mantic.tar.gz.gpgNow we just download the mantic.tar.gz upgrader: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/mantic-updates/main/dist-upgrader-all/current/mantic.tar.gz
root@becky:~# wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/mantic-updates/main/dist-upgrader-all/current/mantic.tar.gz
--2024-10-13 22:14:53-- http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/mantic-updates/main/dist-upgrader-all/current/mantic.tar.gz
Resolving archive.ubuntu.com (archive.ubuntu.com)... 185.125.190.81, 185.125.190.82, 91.189.91.82, ...
Connecting to archive.ubuntu.com (archive.ubuntu.com)|185.125.190.81|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1267298 (1.2M) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: ‘mantic.tar.gz’
mantic.tar.gz 100%[====================================================================================>] 1.21M --.-KB/s in 0.1s
2024-10-13 22:14:53 (9.32 MB/s) - ‘mantic.tar.gz’ saved [1267298/1267298]… unpack it into a separate directory…
root@becky:~# mkdir mantic
root@becky:~# mv mantic.tar.gz mantic
root@becky:~# cd mantic/
root@becky:~/mantic# tar xzvf mantic.tar.gz
./Changelog
./DevelReleaseAnnouncement
./DevelReleaseAnnouncement.html
./DistUpgradeApport.py
./DistUpgradeCache.py… and run it:
root@becky:~/mantic# ./DistUpgradeCache.pyIt will look like a normal do-release-upgrade process, but it’s actually using the Mantic Minotaur upgrader specifically.
Once this upgrade is done, you’ll need to reboot to fully activate the Ubuntu 23.10 upgrade. Here’s how it looks when I login after rebooting:
Welcome to Ubuntu 23.10 (GNU/Linux 6.5.0-1020-raspi aarch64)
* Documentation: https://help.ubuntu.com
* Management: https://landscape.canonical.com
* Support: https://ubuntu.com/pro
System information as of Sun Oct 13 19:54:57 IST 2024
System load: 1.37
Usage of /: 25.4% of 116.88GB
Memory usage: 58%
Swap usage: 57%
Temperature: 71.1 C
Processes: 204
Users logged in: 1
0 updates can be applied immediately.As of October 2024, Ubuntu 23.10 is EoL but still supported in terms of upgrades, so you can upgrade to 24.04 LTS using the normal do-release-upgrade process.
