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This update has been plagued with issues for me. The GUI gives a similar error, but since the first run I've been using the CLI tool do-release-upgrade.

The error

When running the tool, things seem to be going fine until suddenly it crashes with the following:

Calculating the changes

Could not calculate the upgrade 

An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade. 

This was likely caused by: 
* Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu 
Please use the tool 'ppa-purge' from the ppa-purge 
package to remove software from a Launchpad PPA and 
try the upgrade again.

What I've Tried

  • I've confirmed I have no broken packages by:
    • Running apt-update && pkcon update
    • Running sudo apt --fix-broken install
    • Based on this answer, I've run both dpkg -l | grep -E "^..r.*" and sudo apt-get check, both of which returned no text.
  • I installed ppa-purge, and I began removing every third-party ppa I could think of, but so far nothing has changed.

My questions

  1. How do I find the third-party ppas and packages I have installed?
  2. Do I need to simply remove every third-party package I have installed?
  3. If so, is there an easy way to do this?
  4. Is it safe to ppa-purge everything listed in the files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/?
  5. Would I be better off starting from a fresh install?

Update 1

I ran journalctl -xfe while running do-release-upgrade in another terminal, and discovered that packagekitd is reporting many broken packages. This is strange, because I don't think I have any broken packages now. However, from what I understand, my current situation would break while trying to include the new packages for 20.04. I also noticed that many of the "broken" packages were for the i386 architecture. KDE neon only supports 64-bit installs, and I wonder if they didn't expect people to use multiarch... Anyways, I'm going to start by carefully removing as many i386 packages as possible and see if that helps. Here's the full output of journalctl, in case anyone is curious.

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3
  • I have exactly the same problem. Did you have any luck?
    – fear
    Commented Nov 14, 2020 at 12:57
  • unfortunately, I decided it was easier to just back up my data and reinstall linux, so that's what I did :( I've been frustrated with KDE neon so I switched to Kubuntu
    – bweber13
    Commented Dec 2, 2020 at 22:34
  • Check this answer askubuntu.com/a/1306361/110089
    – Erick
    Commented Jan 9, 2021 at 5:47

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

I ran against the same problem, googled a little and came to conclusion that most people solve the problem by looking at /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log and removing the first broken package.

The excerpt from the file on my machine:

Log time: 2021-01-02 18:50:39.243815
Log time: 2021-01-02 18:50:51.559380
Log time: 2021-01-02 18:51:47.706915
  MarkInstall python-is-python2:amd64 < none -> 2.7.17-4 @un uN Ib > FU=1
  Installing python2 as Depends of python-is-python2
    MarkInstall python2:amd64 < none -> 2.7.17-2ubuntu4 @un uN Ib > FU=0
    Installing python2-minimal as PreDepends of python2
      MarkInstall python2-minimal:amd64 < none -> 2.7.17-2ubuntu4 @un uN Ib > FU=0
       Removing: python-minimal
        MarkDelete python-minimal:amd64 < 2.7.15~rc1-1 @ii mK > FU=0
    Installing libpython2-stdlib as Depends of python2
      MarkInstall libpython2-stdlib:amd64 < none -> 2.7.17-2ubuntu4 @un uN Ib > FU=0
       Removing: libpython-stdlib
        MarkDelete libpython-stdlib:amd64 < 2.7.15~rc1-1 @ii mK > FU=0
     Removing: python
      MarkDelete python:amd64 < 2.7.15~rc1-1 @ii mK Ib > FU=0
Starting pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 1
Starting 2 pkgProblemResolver with broken count: 1
Investigating (0) nodejs:amd64 < 12.20.0-1nodesource1 @ii mK Ib >
Broken nodejs:amd64 Depends on python-minimal:amd64 < 2.7.15~rc1-1 @ii gR >
  Considering python-minimal:amd64 1 as a solution to nodejs:amd64 2
  Added python-minimal:amd64 to the remove list
  Fixing nodejs:amd64 via keep of python-minimal:amd64
  MarkKeep python-minimal:amd64 < 2.7.15~rc1-1 @ii gR > FU=0
...

In my case it was enough to uninstall the first broken package - nodejs. After that do-release-upgrade -p worked well. I've installed the package after the upgrade again.

PS: ppa-purge didn't help me. I don't even understand why they suggest to use it as the output of do-release-upgrade contains the message saying that the ppa repositories will be deactivated during the upgrade.

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3
  • Hey, thanks for the answer! I'm not sure if I can accept it though because I'm unable to verify that it works: I've decided to just wipe my computer and reinstall another flavor of GNU linux. I'm not super aware of stackexchange's policies, can you direct me to a place where they talk about what is required to accept an answer?
    – bweber13
    Commented Jan 18, 2021 at 19:41
  • @bweber13 You shouldn't accept my answer if you've solved the problem in another way - by reinstalling ubuntu. However I think it was an overkill. I just posted my solution. If someone has the same problem she may find it helpful.
    – ka3ak
    Commented Jan 18, 2021 at 19:56
  • 1
    I appreciate your response, and I hope someone else finds it helpful. However, I think calling my solution "overkill" is incorrect. Reinstalling ubuntu took ~1 hour of my time. Copy homedir to external drive, reinstall ubuntu, copy homedir back to my computer, reinstall the 3 applications I use on a daily basis. By the time I had posted this question I had already spent 5+ hours trying to fix my install, and your help did not come until 3 months after I posted it. I don't think we should encourage people to spend many hours chasing a "fix" when a simple hard reset will do the trick.
    – bweber13
    Commented Jan 20, 2021 at 17:49

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