[Bug 1744590] Re: do-release-upgrade -d fails without information to resolve failure

[allan nienhuis]

I was finally able to proceed with the upgrade by:
- purging xserver and reinstalling (successful, but no luck with do-release-upgrade)
- manually installing the held-back ati and radeon video drivers (successful, but no luck with do-release-upgrade)
- removed all additional ppas (other software tab in software and updates utility), including any ubuntu ones (I'd previously only removed 3rd party ones)

- did a more thorough cleanup of packages:
sudo apt-get --purge autoremove
sudo apt-get clean all
sudo apt-get purge $(dpkg -l | awk '/^rc/ { print $2 }')

The last command cleaned up a large amount of quite old stale packages.

I changed the software update options to notify me of any new version
(was set to LTS)

the re-ran the do-release-upgrade (without the -d option)

At that point I was successfully able to continue with the upgrade.

So my immediate pain is resolved.  However it would have been nice for
the upgrade process to inform me of the specific invalid configuration
it had encountered, rather than stopping with only vague references to
possible conflicts with 3rd party packages, etc.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to ubuntu-release-upgrader in
Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1744590

Title:
  do-release-upgrade -d fails without information to resolve failure

Status in ubuntu-release-upgrader package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  attempting my distribution upgrade first time resulted in a listed dependency:
  - Hold prevents MarkGarbage of libserf1 [ amd64 ] < 1.1.0-2ubuntu1 > ( libs )

  which I then removed successfully: 
  - sudo apt remove libserf1

  re-running the distribution upgrade (do-release-upgrade -d) again still failed, but this time without any specific information about the reason:
  ----
  Calculating the changes

  Calculating the changes

  Could not calculate the upgrade

  An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade.

  This can be caused by: 
  * Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu 
  * Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu 
  * Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu 
  ----

  I expect it's most likely to be a 3rd party package.  I have no
  problem with removing any needed package and attempting reinstall
  after the upgrade, but I have no idea what package to look into.

  If someone could review the associated logs for any relevant info that
  would be really appreciated.

  In the mean time I'll reboot and retry...

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
  Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:16.04.23
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-109.132-generic 4.4.98
  Uname: Linux 4.4.0-109-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.15
  Architecture: amd64
  CrashDB: ubuntu
  CurrentDesktop: Unity
  Date: Sun Jan 21 11:18:34 2018
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-09-05 (1233 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
  PackageArchitecture: all
  SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2018-01-21 (0 days ago)

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/+bug/1744590/+subscriptions