The machine has no desktop, only a command shell. It is running 12.04. I have been doing apt-get update & upgrade weekly for four years. How do I convert it to 16.04 from the command line? I have a 16.04 server install CD, do I boot from that?
Ubuntu – How to upgrade a server from 12.04 to 16.04
server
Best Answer
General
You can always upgrade from LTS to LTS, in your case that would mean:
As far as i know there is no supported upgrade from 12.04 to 16.04 directly.
Following this approach there is no need for your 16.04 medium
As always, consider creating a backup of your critical files before you start.
Limit to LTS
The way to limit upgrades to LTS without a GUI is to change the value of
Prompt
in/etc/update-manager/release-upgrades
.Set it to
The possible values are
never: Never check for a new release.
normal: Check to see if a new release is available. If more than one new release is found, the release upgrader will attempt to upgrade to the release that immediately succeeds the currently-running release.
lts: Check to see if a new LTS release is available. The upgrader will attempt to upgrade to the first LTS release available after the currently-running one. Note that this option should not be used if the currently-running release is not itself an LTS release, since in that case the upgrader won't be able to determine if a newer release is available
How to upgrade
For both upgrade processes you should always update the current system via
Then start the upgrade via
or - SPECIAL CASE - for development versions (which is valid for upgrades from 14.04 to 16.04 until 16.04.1 was released):
If
do-release-upgrade
command is not found, install it: