These are the steps I took to upgrade my blogs server from Lucid (10.04) LTS to Trusty (14.04) LTS.

First backup your server as a new restorable image.

Get the latest packages for Lucid:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Change release-upgrades prompt to lts:

sudo vim /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

Change Prompt to lts.

The above was needed otherwise I got a “Failed Upgrade tool signature” error.

Start a tmux session (in case your network goes down mid-upgrade):

tmux

And start the actual upgrade:

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
sudo do-release-upgrade

You will get asked if you want to overwrite configuration files which have been changed since install. I choose “no” for all Apache config files and /etc/sudoers and “yes” for everything else.

Unmet dependencies

If you get an errors at the end check for unmet dependencies:

sudo dpkg --audit

Most unmet dependencies can be fixed with:

sudo apt-get -f install

This did not work for all unmet dependencies and I had to remove the remaining half installed package (in my case git):

sudo dpkg --remove <package>
sudo apt-get install <package>

Finally

exit the tmux session and sudo reboot now.

If everything is okay you can repeat the process to upgrade Trusty 14.0.4 LTS, if desired. But take another backup image first!

After this running sudo do-release-upgrade you should get “Now new release found”.

Fixing Apache

I choose to keep my existing Apache config files as a result a few things needed fixing:

  • Remove Include http.conf and Include conf.d/* in apache.conf as these no longer exist

  • Replace LockFile with Mutex file:${APACHE_LOCK_DIR} default in apache.conf

  • Reinstall Passenger

    • Install Apache dev headers: sudo apt-get install apache2-threaded-dev libapr1-dev libaprutil1-dev
    • Comment out existing passenger lines in apache.conf and site-enabled/*.conf (because passenger will not install until Apache is restartable)
    • gem install passenger
    • rvmsudo passenger-install-apache2-module
    • Grab a coffee…
    • Take note of the post install instructions and paste in the relevant lines in to apache2.conf
    • Uncomment the passenger related lines in site-enabled/*.conf
    • sudo apachecrl restart

Pat yourself on the back, no need for a full upgrade for many years.