I know a few outthere are wondering if you can safely upgrade from Ubuntu 18 → Ubuntu 20?
And until now the testing we had done wasn´t very successful!
BUT this has now changed 
So go ahead and give it a go!
For starters not all server setup are equal but my base was a:
-
Former UB 18 minimal install on Hetzner raid 0
-
Newest Quickbox Pro version
-
Fresh server with only Web Console!
Before you start give some thought into this - should I simply uninstall apps before upgrade?
I do recommend that you do actually as you then will get a super smooth transition and it reinstalling apps is a much more stable approach.
I´ve tried with with the following apps installed:
- Deluge 2
- rtorrent 0.9.8/rutorrent 3.10/autodl-irssi
- Plex
- Taultulli
- TheLounge
- Btsync
- Web Console
These did not survive the upgrade and had to be reinstalled:
- Btsync
- Deluge 2
- TheLounge
Therefore be sure to move your downloaded data into a back up folder to avoid the removal of ex. Deluge or backup the config!
Before upgrading to Ubuntu 20.04, you should first update the current 18.04. It’s recommended to update/upgrade all installed packages before upgrading. To update Ubuntu, connect to the server and run the commands below:
sudo su -
then
apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade && sudo apt autoremove
Also be sure to run newest version of QB Pro!
After updating Ubuntu 18.04 server, run the commands below to install update-manager-core if it is not already installed.
apt-get install update-manager-core
Then open the update-manager configuration file and make sure the Prompt line is set to lts
nano /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades
Confirm that the Prompt is equal lts
# Default behavior for the release upgrader.
[DEFAULT]
# Default prompting behavior, valid options:
#
# 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.
Prompt=lts
If not, change it to lts and save the file.
Now that your system is ready, run the commands below to begin Ubuntu upgrade to the latest development release…
do-release-upgrade -d
Just follow the instructions!
The upgrade process will start - be sure to answer N to the questions about keeping configs. Keep the originals, do not change them! (Did I say it is important - keep that N!)
…Yes to below!
…DId not worry too much about the phpmyadmin upgrade asked about. - just select no and be sure to not select anything in the check mark listing on this - leave blank and select OK.
…And grub will be upgraded too so remember to select your drives…
…And yes do remove obsolete files when asked at the end.
Once completed you will be asked to reboot and now the fun begins
The goal to get qb fix version complete without any problems/warnings preferably.
Compared to my upgrade from 18 a year ago this was surprisingly smooth - it completed the first time without any problems.
So I started out going for a:
sudo su -
then a
qb fix version
that is it - I am now running Focal!
Last thing to do is enable sources for focal as they have been disabled due to upgrade:
/etc/apt/sources.list.d
As minimum you would need the following:
- influxdb.list (just remove the # inside the file)
- mariadb.list (just remove the # inside the file)
- ondrej-ubuntu-php-focal.list
For ondrej you would need to add:
add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php and remove the old one list.
This was a rundown of my upgrade to Ubuntu 20.
Not that it is an official “we support an upgrade” but just showing its not as frightful as it may sound and you shouldn´t be scared of taking up the task!
But it is a journey you take at your own risk
Feel free to comment or try it out on your own risk but there´s a lot of users on Discord that would be able to help out answering questions related to this.
But don´t expect that an answer can be found straight away as people have different kind of set ups, hosts and kernels so things might or might not be straight forward.
I tried out on a vm box then took on a live box.
/Globber
ps. spelling or grammar errors are free of charge 