In-place upgrades aren’t recommended for production systems. This could result in a less stable system and/or cause applications to break.

Ideally a test system running the newer OS is setup and applications are tested there. Or a new system is stood-up and applications/data is migrated over with testing along the way.

Sometimes the customer chooses an in-place upgrade anyways…

In-Place Upgrade Ubuntu 14.* LTS -> 18.* #

Resources #

• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-upgrade-to-ubuntu-18-04
• https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ubuntu-bash-do-release-upgrade-command-not-found/

Upgrade #

Note: must be run as root, or with sudo

1. Take a snapshot
2. Optional but recommended: Make sure data on system is backed up, or customer has backups. Disclaimer, data loss can occur. Backups are strongly recommended.
3. Run system updates:

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
reboot

4. On our containers do-upgrade-release isn’t installed by default, so install it:

apt install ubuntu-release-upgrader-core

5. Run upgrader:

do-upgrade-release

Use best judgement for prompts or keep defaults.

6. Verify upgrade completed successfully:

uname -a
uname -mrs
lsb_release -a