I recently managed to upgrade from Breezy to Dapper, versions 5.10 and 6.06 respectively for you number nuts, and I got to keep all my files and settings, well, nearly all. So anyway, I just decided to put this here before I forget exactly what I did.
Don’t take this as a literal guide, I’m just saying what I did to get it working. Don’t even hold me liable if it doesn’t work. Skip the next two paragraphs if you’re uninterested in my self-centered rambling.
The reason I used the CD to upgrade instead of the internet is my connection is erratic. It’s fast enough, typical downloads from the repos go at 18-50kB/s but it keeps going down, and hence it’s not very nice keeping it on all night and finding only half done in the morning.
So, I downloaded the ISO. Again, there was trouble, the ISO is a file that’s so large that my proxy cache doesn’t permit it. The company that my dad works for gives us free internet with these restrictions, and once (if) I get my more liberal broadband connection later I’ll be very happy, but for now I have to live with it. So how do you handle this problem? One word: Jigdo! jigdo’s useful for those people who have to keep stopping and resuming too, because there’s less chance of corruption.
First, if you have a proxy, read this . Just follow the instructions for wget and apt-get, though apt-get isn’t really necessary here.
Jigdo
Jigdo is quite easy to work, and you’ll need 3 things.
- A working internet connection.
- The jigdo tools
- The jigdo file for Dapper Drake : You don’t need to download this, just copy the link.
Now, extract the jigdo tools somewhere and run jigdo-lite in a terminal window, then paste in the URL to the jigdo file (Ctrl-Shift-V does the trick in the Ubuntu terminal).
To choose a mirror in the screen that comes up, just type in your country code (e.g. us for the United States, in for India) and see what turns up. Try a couple of the mirrors and if they work, then hurrah, if they don’t, you’ll usually get an Error 404 on the first file.
Copy paste that filename into google and then look for: (you can use the “only pages from if you want)
“index of”
and you’ll get a couple of links to directory listings of a couple of sites with that file. Now take the url Google gives you and strip it of everything after ubuntu/pool/….
For e.g. If you have http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/x/xserver-xorg-input-elographics/
you enter
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/
into that mirrors list. After this everything is pretty much automatic, no trouble.
The Real Action
Upgrade problems:
- Open-office dissappeared, but was easily reinstalled from the CD itself.
- My proxy setting no longer sets username and password well, easily remedied.
- Nautilus Actions for Nautilus no longer works, though the menu entries are still there, easily remedied.
- Banshee no longer works. Haven’t downloaded the latest from the repos, so I can’t say if it can be fixed.
- Xserver broke after installation but was okay after installing the via
- gnome-cups-manager dissappears after upgrade, easily remedied by reinstall
So if you’re willing to go through that, then proceed.
- Burn the ISO you have to a CD, you can install it off the ISO itself but it’s generally a nice idea to have the CD lying around.
- Insert and mount the CD after booting Ubuntu.
- System >> Administration >> Synaptic >> Edit >> Add CDROM… and add your Alternate CD.
- Now go to a terminal prompt and type in
"sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.breezy
"
- Then, “
sudo gedit sources.list
” and then put a # in front of all the lines that start with deb-src. Leave the “deb cdrom” alone.
- Now, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and you should be at a console.
- Type in, “
sudo apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
“
- Let it upgrade and remove stuff as it sees fit.
- There shouldn’t be much trouble at this stage. Once it’s done restart the computer with “
sudo reboot
” . I couldn’t get gdm to start again straight from there.
- Once it reboots you should be in Dapper. You may have trouble with your via driver (I did!), in that case, get back to console mode and type in “
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-driver-via
“
- Now reboot and it should all be fine. (you could try running /etc/init.d/gdm , but I just couldn’t get it running that way)
Now, go back to console, and type “sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
” and uncomment everything that you commented. Then change every occurrence of “breezy” in the file to “dapper”. The replace tool comes in handy :)
That’s all, you have Dapper Drake, and it’ll update from the repos if you let it.
Now the fixes.
Fixes:
- Open-office:
sudo apt-get install open-office*
and you have everything back.
- Network Proxy: System >> Preferences >> Network Proxy. Now here replace every instance of “
http://proxy:port/
” with “http://username:password@proxy:port/
“
- Nautilus Actions: In console, type “
sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions
“
- Gnome-Cups-Manager: In console, type “
sudo apt-get install gnome-cups-manager
“
That’s all I did, and now I have everything I had before working on Dapper.
DISCLAIMER: This is no guide, I’m just outlining what I did, even if my language seems to imply that I’m requesting you to do something. It worked for me, I hope it works for you, but I’m not responsible if your hard-drive turns into smouldering junk after you do what I did.