[Bug 1795024] Re: release-upgrades Prompt to anything other than normal prevents beta upgrades

[Brian Murray]

do-release-upgrade relies on update-manager's MetaReleaseCore to parse
the /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades configuration file so any
changes would likely require modifying update-manager to return
information about what prompt is set to and for do-release-upgrade to
return a more informative error message.

** Also affects: update-manager (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: ubuntu-release-upgrader (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Triaged

** Changed in: update-manager (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Triaged

** Changed in: ubuntu-release-upgrader (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Medium

** Changed in: update-manager (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided => Medium

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1795024

Title:
  release-upgrades Prompt to anything other than normal prevents beta
  upgrades

Status in ubuntu-release-upgrader package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in update-manager package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  The prompt setting in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades controls
  whether the user is prompted to upgrade, but also controls whether the
  user can manually upgrade using do-release-upgrade -d.

  Steps to reproduce:
  1) On an 18.04 machine, set Prompt in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades to lts or never.
  2) Attempt to upgrade to 18.10 beta using do-release-upgrade -d.  
  3) The upgrade reports "Upgrades to the development release are only available from the latest supported release."  This is both an incorrect error message, and it prevents upgrade even though the user has specifically requested the development version.

  Possible fixes:
  1) The documentation should be changed to indicate that the Prompt argument controls both whether you are prompted to upgrade, but also whether you can use the upgrade tool at all.
  2) A second configuration option should be added to allow the admin to control the prompting for upgrade separately from the ability to upgrade, allowing users to upgrade the system manually, even when Prompt is set to never.

  Question:  Is the default setting of Prompt=lts going to prevent users
  from upgrading their 18.04 machines to 18.10 until they change it to
  normal?

  Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
  Release:        18.04

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