Problem upgrading an offline computer

[Mariano Jara]

Hi all,

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS (Lucid) Linux 2.6.32-24-generic
#42-Ubuntu SMP i686 GNU/Linux. It's not a fresh install, I've been
upgrading since 9.04.

This is an off-line machine at work, I'm behind a proxy server, so I've
only got access to intranet and a few .gov sites.

Just now, I've tried to upgrade to Maverick 10.10 following the below
instructions. I've got the iso file on my desktop
(ubuntu-10.10-alternate-i386.iso).

'Upgrading Using the Alternate CD/DVD

Use this method if the system being upgraded is not connected to the
Internet.

<snip>

If the ISO file is on the computer to be upgraded, you could avoid
wasting a CD by mounting the ISO as a drive with a command like:

sudo mkdir -p /media/cdrom
sudo mount -o loop
~/Desktop/ubuntu-10.10-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom

A dialog will be displayed offering you the opportunity to upgrade using
that CD.

<snip>'

Ok, that dialog never showed up, so I tried this instead:

'If the upgrade dialog is not displayed for any reason, you may also run
the following command using Alt+F2:

gksu "sh /media/cdrom/cdromupgrade"'

After this last command, the dist-upgrade dialog did pop up asking me if
I wanted to use the internet to download the latest updates (defaulting
to yes), to which I clicked "no". A few seconds later this error message
pops up:

"Could not determine the upgrade

An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade:
Can not mark 'ubuntu-desktop' for 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

If none of this applies, then please report this bug against the
'update-manager' package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/
in the bug report."

I've looked into some of these logs, but I must admit that I couldn't
find anything wrong (for my basic level of knowledge on the matter)
apart from the not being able to mark Ubuntu-desktop for upgrade line. I
don't know what I'm looking for here. I can post the logs (or part of
them) if needed.

I also though of running "Computer Janitor" first and then try again the
upgrade; but then I realized that (not sure here) maybe Janitor would
erase some important pieces of information (like logs) to troubleshoot
my problem. So I'd rather ask here first.

Any help or pointers are greatly appreciated. Cheers,

-- 
Mariano