You can use command line to upgrade Ubuntu server. If you use SSH to log into your Ubuntu server, it is a good idea to keep your OpenSSH session alive by adding the following line in /etc/ssh/sshd_config file on your server.
ClientAliveInterval 60
Save and close the file. Then restart SSH daemon.
sudo systemctl restart ssh
To upgrade to Ubuntu 19.10, run the following command to upgrade existing software. (Please note that if a new kernel is installed while running the following command, you need to reboot system in order to continue the upgrade process.)
sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade
Then make sure you have update-manager-core package installed.
sudo apt install update-manager-core
Next, edit a configuration file using nano or your preferred command line text editor.
sudo nano /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades
At the bottom of this file, change the value of Prompt from lts to normal.
Prompt=normal
To save a file in Nano text editor, press Ctrl+O, then press Enter to confirm. To exit, press Ctrl+X.
Next, run the following command to begin the upgrade process.
do-release-upgrade
Sample output:
Reading cache Checking package manager Continue running under SSH? This session appears to be running under ssh. It is not recommended to perform a upgrade over ssh currently because in case of failure it is harder to recover. If you continue, an additional ssh daemon will be started at port '1022'. Do you want to continue? Continue [yN] y Starting additional sshd To make recovery in case of failure easier, an additional sshd will be started on port '1022'. If anything goes wrong with the running ssh you can still connect to the additional one. If you run a firewall, you may need to temporarily open this port. As this is potentially dangerous it's not done automatically. You can open the port with e.g.: 'iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 1022 -j ACCEPT' To continue please press [ENTER] Checking package manager Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Calculating the changes Calculating the changes No candidate ver: initscripts No candidate ver: insserv No candidate ver: libgdbm3 No candidate ver: libjson-c2 No candidate ver: libperl5.22 No candidate ver: libpython3.5-minimal No candidate ver: linux-modules-4.15.0-20-generic No candidate ver: python3.5-minimal No candidate ver: sysv-rc Do you want to start the upgrade? 3 installed packages are no longer supported by Canonical. You can still get support from the community. 55 new packages are going to be installed. 400 packages are going to be upgraded. You have to download a total of 308 M. This download will take about 39 minutes with a 1Mbit DSL connection and about 11 hours with a 56k modem. Fetching and installing the upgrade can take several hours. Once the download has finished, the process cannot be canceled. Continue [yN] Details [d]y
If you are using Ubuntu 19.04, then follow the on-screen instruction to upgrade to Ubuntu 19.10.
If you are using Ubuntu 18.04, then follow the on-screen instruction to upgrade to Ubuntu 19.04 first. After that, follow the same steps to upgrade to Ubuntu 19.10.
Afterwards we must make sure that the GRUB2 bootloader is installed on hard drive /dev/sda:
grub-install /dev/sda
… and update our GRUB2 bootloader configuration:
update-grub update-initramfs -u
Reboot your Ubuntu server.
reboot
To check your Ubuntu version, run:
lsb_release -a
Sample output:
No LSB modules are available. Distributor ID: Ubuntu Description: Ubuntu 19.10 Release: 19.10 Codename: eoan
Should you use the -d option?
The update-manager and do-release-upgrade command come with a -d option, which will cause the system to upgrade to a development release.
Currently, Ubuntu 19.10 is still considered a development release in Ubuntu release cadence, because development of Ubuntu 20.04 isn’t started yet. It will happen one week after the release of Ubuntu 19.10 and we can use the -d option before that happens. When Ubuntu 20.04 enters development, you should not use the -d option.
Tested on these servers:
1. www.dedikuoti.lt – OpenVZ server error after attempt to upgrade “This version of the GNU libs requires kernel version 3.2 or later. No solution.
2. www.dedikuoti.lt – KVM server error after attempt to upgrade “grub2 – grub_file_filters not found after Ubuntu 19.10 upgrade”. Solution install or upgrade existing grub before reboot a server.
3. www.contabo.com – perfect no any errors.
4. www.digitalocean.com – perfect no any errors.
5. www.hostinger.lt – Ubuntu upgrade not possible.
Attention: this update will not work on dedikuoti.lt OpenVZ servers except KVM servers. OpenVZ container will return this message:
This version of the GNU libc requires kernel version 3.2 or later. Please upgrade your kernel before installing glibc.
Conclusion
I hope this tutorial helped you upgrade Ubuntu 18.04 or Ubuntu 19.04 to Ubuntu 19.10.