Are you seeing errors like Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/ binary … 404 Not Found?
Ubuntu have dropped support for 10.4 & 10.10. By default now when you run the apt-get / apt-update and sudo do-release-upgrade you’ll start getting 404 errors to say that various repositories can’t be fetched / found.
For examples you’ll be seeing something like this:
Failed to fetch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
404 Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
404 Not Found
This is because Ubuntu have moved them from their archive site to their http://old-releases.ubuntu.com site but your Ubuntu Linux installation doesn’t know about that site. I’m not sure why they do this because it must be causing pain for thousands of users as they come to upgrade. I know they’ve had plenty of time to upgrade but lots of people don’t upgrade until they have a real business driver to do so.
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP
How to fix your Ubuntu Linus 10.4 / 10.10 Maverick so you can upgrade it.
To fix the 404 issue so that your Ubuntu Maverick installation can find the repositories so that it can do the upgrade you need to update your sources.list file.
To do that issue the sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list command
Replace the existing lines with the following:
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates main restricted
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-security main restricted
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-security universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-security multiverse
save the file and then issue the following commands:
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
sudo do-release-upgrade
The do-release-upgrade command will now upgrade you to the next release eg 11.04. When that finishes do it again to go to 11.10 and again to go to 12.04 etc until your system is up to date or at the level you want it.
This assumes you are happy to upgrade from the command line.
THANK YOU!!! I have been trying to figure this out for years. Kudos, +1’s, thumbs up all around.