the essential package 'ubuntu-minimal' could not be located

Posted on September 18, 2022

Following https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-upgrade-to-ubuntu-22-04-jammy-jellyfish to upgrade Ubuntu but failed with the following ERROR message.

After updating your package information, the essential package 
'ubuntu-minimal' could not be located. This may be because you have 
no official mirrors listed in your software sources, or because of 
excessive load on the mirror you are using. See /etc/apt/sources.list 
for the current list of configured software sources. 
In the case of an overloaded mirror, you may want to try the upgrade 
again later.

So, how should I modify /etc/apt/sources.list in order to install jammy from focal?

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Bobby Iliev

September 20, 2022

Accepted Answer

Hi there,

There seem to have been a similar question here:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/questions/cannot-update-to-19-04-the-essential-package-ubuntu-minimal-could-not-be-located-2

The solution listed there was to use the following command:

sudo do-release-upgrade --allow-third-party

UPDATE: In addition to the above, as reported by @studotson they had to use RELEASE_UPGRADER_ALLOW_THIRD_PARTY=1 do-release-upgrade instead, which worked for them.

Let me know how it goes!

Best,

Bobby