Kyle Brandt

Update: I do not recommend the following the method. It left me with a partial install (which fortunately I have seem to recovered from). Also when trying to install a restricted driver, I had to delete the cdrom source from apt. This was because the restricted drivers GUI would hang when trying to mount the cdrom.

Since I have several computers with Ubuntu that I wanted to upgrade the most efficient way for me to do this was to upgrade using the cdrom. In order to do this you must use the alternate install cd. If you scroll to the bottom of the previous link you can grab the alternate cd from one of the mirrors.

When I did the following upgrade process it was from Hardy Heron to Intrepid Ibex. The following instructions are at your own risk, upgrades can often lead to bad situations.

1. Get the alternate install cd (see above).
2. Mount the .iso image or burn it and put it in the cdrom drive: To mount the iso image, first create the /mnt/iso directory with mkdir /mnt/iso and then: sudo mount ubuntu-8.10-alternate-i386.iso /mnt/iso/ -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0
3. ssh into your remote machine you wish to upgrade: ssh remote-machine
4. (Optional, but highly recommended): Start a screen session so if you get disconnected it won’t interrupt the upgrade (read how to use screen here): screen
5. Within the screen session, start a text-based cdrom upgrade with the following command: sudo /mnt/iso/cdromupgrade –frontend=DistUpgradeViewText
6. The upgrade will periodically ask you yes/no questions throughout the upgrade, so it is not unattended. If you really wanted it to you could try using the yes command and a pipe to force yes to all, but I wouldn’t recommend it and am not sure if it would work:-) One odd thing is if you type ‘d’ for details it opens the information in the program ‘less’, so if you chose this just press ‘q’ to quit after you are done reading the information.