Ubuntu old upgrade 8.04 -> 12.04 - linux

Question

Moved to superuser.com
I have a computer running the old Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.
As well as 8.04, the next LTS version, 10.04 is also no longer supported.
There is no published path of direct upgrade from 8.04 -> 12.04.
There is published a path from 8.04 -> 10.04 and thence a path from 10.04 -> 12.04
If I try the standard normal upgrade instruction, I get an error with Python. Ubuntu 8.04 comes with Python 2.5. In this error message, "Precise" is the nickname of Ubuntu 12.04.
stewart#old-ubuntu-box:~$ sudo do-release-upgrade
Checking for a new ubuntu release
Done Upgrade tool signature
Done Upgrade tool
Done downloading
authenticate 'precise.tar.gz' against 'precise.tar.gz.gpg'
extracting 'precise.tar.gz'
/tmp/tmpwfCGnZ/DistUpgradeMain.py:102: Warning: 'with' will become a reserved keyword in Python 2.6
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/tmp/tmpwfCGnZ/precise", line 3, in <module>
from DistUpgradeMain import main
File "/tmp/tmpwfCGnZ/DistUpgradeMain.py", line 102
with open(fname, "a"):
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
If I try to upgrade Python to 2.6 or 2.7, to support running of the upgrade, I find dependency problems because I'm still only on 8.04.
stewart#old-ubuntu-box:~$ sudo apt-get install python2.6
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies.
python2.6: Depends: python2.6-minimal (= 2.6.5-1ubuntu7~lts1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.11) but 2.7-10ubuntu8.3 is to be installed
Depends: libdb4.8 but it is not installable
Depends: libreadline6 (>= 6.0) but it is not installable
Depends: libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.6.22) but 3.4.2-2 is to be installed
E: Broken packages
It's a circular catch-22. Ideally, I should be able to install the correct versions of these broken dependencies (libc6, etc), but chasing down how to do this for an unsupported release has been elusive.
Any suggestions how to escape / tackle this?
Update:
I've managed to upgrade Python using make install from instructions found here, however, the Python error upon do-release-upgrade is identical.

Answer 1

Hate to necro an old thread but I came across this issue firing up an old PC and beginning the upgrade path through to hopefully 18.04... I resolved this in my instance by downgrading the update-manager and update-manager-core packages from 1:0.87.33 to 1:0.87.24 (if I remember the versions correctly). Nothing else worked.

Answer 2

The Official upgrade notes manual for the said releases states:
To avoid damaging your running system, upgrading should only be done
from one release to the next release (e.g. Ubuntu 12.04 to Ubuntu
12.10) or from one LTS release to the next (e.g. Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu
12.04 LTS) If you wish to 'skip' a version, you can back up your data and do a fresh installation, or progressively upgrade to each
successive version.

Answer 3

My suggestion would be that, download the Ubuntu 12.04/14.04, take a back of the current system and wipe it clean, load the new one. If you follow this way, you wont have any problems with dependencies and other issues.
But if you still want to stick to this route, you would need to upgrade a lot of stuff, starting from libc, gtk, xorg, xserver, python, gcc, g++ and many more. It is time-taking and much more difficult to do.