[Bug 1888711] Re: do-release-upgrade (16.04->18.04) insists on removing freeipa-client and other packages

[Brian Murray]

Have you tried installing one of the desktop meta packages and seeing if
that resolves some of the issues?  From main.log:

2020-07-20 15:47:13,479 DEBUG none of the '['ubuntu-desktop', 'kubuntu-desktop', 'xubuntu-core', 'xubuntu-desktop', 'ubuntustudio-desktop', 'mythbuntu-desktop', 'kubuntu-netbook', 'lubuntu-core', 'lubuntu-desktop', 'ubuntu-gnome-desktop', 'ubuntu-mate-core', 'ubuntu-mate-cloudtop', 'ubuntu-mate-desktop', 'ubuntukylin-desktop']' meta-pkgs installed
2020-07-20 15:47:13,480 DEBUG guessing 'ubuntu-gnome-desktop' as missing meta-pkg

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

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1888711

Title:
  do-release-upgrade (16.04->18.04) insists on removing freeipa-client
  and other packages

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

Bug description:
  [Background: we have a bunch of Ubuntu 16.04 systems which we will want to
  upgrade, ultimately to 20.04 but for now 18.04 because it's a mandatory
  stepping point anyway.  I am trying the upgrade initially on a VM snapshot
  to make sure it will work.  So I have attempted this several times.]

  Using do-release-upgrade on a xenial system to upgrade it to bionic insists
  on removing freeipa-client, and so by the time the upgrade has finished
  the system has forgotten who I am.  I'd rather not have to reinstall this
  because it's not clear how easy it is to reconfigure an already-enrolled
  client when the package has been removed.  We'd like our users to still be
  able to log in after the upgrade.

  There appear to be two main reasons for this.  The first is that xenial's
  freeipa-client depends on ntp while bionic's depends on chrony; and the
  upgrader doesn't seem to want to make this switch.  If I hack the installer
  to add freeipa-client to the removal_blacklist then it refuses to perform
  the upgrade at all, saying that freeipa-client is marked for removal but
  it is in the removal blacklist.  (This is how I know the hack worked.)

  So, for the remainder of this description I have removed ntp ignoring 
  dependencies before attempting the release upgrade.  This appears to make
  the system successfully configure chrony instead.  But now, even with
  freeipa-client in the removal blacklist, it still gets removed!

  The second problem lies in the following chain of dependencies (in reverse
  order of appearance in the terminal output):

    Removing freeipa-client:amd64 rather than change sssd:amd64
    Removing sssd:amd64 rather than change sssd-ad:amd64
    Removing sssd-ad:amd64 rather than change samba-libs:amd64
    Removing sssd-ipa:amd64 rather than change samba-libs:amd64
    Removing samba-libs:amd64 rather than change libldb1:amd64

  I can find no reason given for a problem with libldb1.  Moreover, at the end
  of the upgrade, both libldb1 and samba-libs are installed on the system, so
  it lied about having to remove samba-libs and therefore the removal of sssd
  and freeipa-client was unnecessary.

  So I am currently solving this problem by removing samba-libs ignoring
  dependencies before attempting the release upgrade.  This seems to work,
  but finding out that I had to do that was a bit of a palaver.

  Aside from this, freeipa-client isn't the only package that gets needlessly
  removed.  Several other packages also end up missing after the upgrade,
  mostly because of some problem with the perl libraries; but since perl was 
  successfully upgraded, and all these packages can be simply reinstalled 
  after the upgrade, it seems there is some bug with the dependency calculation.
  These ones are easier to reinstall, so my current solution is simply to 
  reinstall them afterwards.  The packages include:

   libtimedate-perl
   apt-file
   enscript
   vim-gnome
   fvwm

  and mate-desktop-environment, another victim of samba-libs; and also emacs,
  which depends explicitly on emacs24 and the upgrader can't seem to work
  out that the new version depends on emacs25 instead.

  I'm attaching the rather voluminous terminal output from do-release-
  upgrade.

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