i've tried to upgrade to 16.04 on several occasions but keep getting the following messages,





I've checked my internet connection and its fine, other than that i've no idea what to do next, any help greatly appreciated.

Hi Alan.

Maverick is Ubuntu 10.10. It's well out of date and its presence indicates that you should have a look at your software sources before upgrading.

If you have inxi installed, run inxi -r and paste the output here. If you don't have it installed, install it with sudo apt-get install inxi. There are other ways of showing the software sources, but this is the easiest, imo.

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Didn't seem obvious, but I'm guessing hydrurga concluded Maverick based upon the image showing the attempt to get software from the repositories. I won't disagree with them there, but add that when you are looking to upgrade something which is end of life as well as is not a long term support version, that this will be extremely difficult. Maverick was end of life 5 years ago in 2012. I would suggest that instead of attempting an upgrade, you do a fresh install.

Hi, thanks for your quick reply, can I do a re install without losing all my files or should I back them up first if so where to?

Thanks in advance

Ubuntu is *usually* good at version upgrades (although of course the advice to ensure backups before upgrading is as important as always).

The rationale for my post above is that the upgrade process is unable to find the Maverick-backports repos because they no longer exist. The very fact that the OP's software sources include these outdated repos shows that they haven't been well managed. So, better to take a look and see what the situation is, to try and only retain those software sources related to 14.04.

All in all, I think it would be good to attempt the upgrade, after saving the data, and then use a reinstall as a fallback. But we'll see...

Intellectually, and knowing that it is probably going to fail and fail miserably, I'm betting I might try it, but give up rapidly.

I would first back up as both of you have commented, and then might give it a try.

My guess however is that since I'm already pessimistic about it, plus the obvious possibility that the Maverick repositories likely no longer exist as a first level blocking problem, I'd not last much beyond 2-3 failed command attempts.

What do I care how well or poorly Ubuntu has supported upgrades from about six or seven versions ago?

Thinking that the proper upgrade path here would be to try to upgrade to the next level of LTS, which is one of the 12.xx versions. Then unsure if you can go from 12 right to current day, 16.xx? I believe there is a 17.xx but that's not an LTS. The recommendation would be to go LTS to LTS and then get cutting edge experimental if you wish to go that far. Cutting to the chase you can download the latest cutting edge, or LTS ISO file and be done in less than an hour or two.

I'll leave someone else to advise you on that because I do things a "strange" way. I keep my data in a separate partition, and also keep notes of all software I install (how I install it, how I configure it etc.). In that way, I can enjoy a hassle-free reinstall just by following my own instructions regarding any additional software packages.

It comes down to where you store your data (documents etc.) - you will need to copy these to an external media (and ensure that the copy has gone well). You may also want to backup the . (dot) configuration files and folders in your home directory to an external media - often folk do this and then simply copy those files back to the new installation (me, I prefer to do things more cleanly).

All in all, if you haven't stored your data anywhere unusual, you should backup your entire home directory, including all hidden files, to an external media.

The OP actually has 14.04 installed (or so they say), it just appears that there are some old repos in there.

14.04 to 16.04 has a good chance of succeeding.

Absolutely not strange at all, for personal systems I keep my data completely separate from the install, always.

For work, there are two variations. (1) A full up desktop system and (2) a fully customized system. Both cases are actually customized, just that some are far more customized because they become minimal and usually run headless. Either case, exact same things are typically done, I write down all items done, tried, successes and failures. This is especially important when you're experimenting to try and find the correct configuration for what your intentions are. It's never always the same flow from use case to use case, but I typically then need to duplicate that process for a release.

Thank you all for your sage advice, I should have added that the version I currently have installed is the LTS version of 14.04.
All the info I have gained before trying this forum led me to believe there would be no problem upgrading, I'm going to try installing inxi and see what I can gather from that.

Can't these problem repos just be commented out in the /etc/apt/sources.list?