# Ubuntu Release Upgrade **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Tags:** ubuntu\ **Created:** [October 26, 2013, 1:36am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ubuntu-release-upgrade/13773 "2013-10-26T01:36:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Paul\_Wolstenholme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47c2d/32.png) [@Paul\_Wolstenholme](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Paul_Wolstenholme)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 1:36am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ubuntu-release-upgrade/13773/1 "2013-10-26T01:36:13Z")
I’m just starting using Ansible a few weeks ago. Using: ansible 1.4 (devel a002a24973) last updated 2013/09/25 17:14:03 (GMT -700) Currently, I’m using it with Vagrant, VirtualBox with Ansible as a provisioner to build a clustered Varnish test suite. It works awesome. In our dev/qa/production environments we’ve been running Varnish on Ubuntu Lucid. I’d like to upgrade to Precise. Time to upgrade. I thought this might be good test for Ansible. I’ve downloaded the standard lucid64 box and created a simple playbook: - name: Update apt cache action: apt update\_cache=true tags: ubuntu\_upgrade - name: Distribution Upgrade {{dist\_upgrade}} apt: pkg=update-manager-core state=latest when: ${dist\_upgrade} register: upgrade tags: ubuntu\_upgrade - name: Do Release Upgrade command: /usr/bin/do-release-upgrade -f DistUpgradeViewNonInteractive when: (upgrade|success) and (${dist\_upgrade}) tags: ubuntu\_upgrade When I run the playbook, the do-release fails task fails and Ansible hangs. I thought at some point it may timeout or someting but I let in run all night and the console indicated it was still working on the task. When I log into the machines while the tasks are executing. It seems to start off okay on one machine but after a few minutes activity on the box decreases to an idle state. One thing I noticed is a precise process that has gone into a zombie state. The task does not kick off on the other box. I am curious if anyone might be able to shed some light on doing a release upgrade on Ubuntu using Ansible. If I ssh into the guest machine I can run it manually. Cheers, Paul ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2013, 3:23pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ubuntu-release-upgrade/13773/2 "2013-10-26T15:23:19Z")
I would probably consider async mode (see docs on async), though I would expect you to encounter an SSH timeout. It is probably that this command is not daemonizing correctly. I should point out your use of legacy variables is discouraged: when: (upgrade|success) and (${dist\_upgrade}) Can be written as: when: (upgrade|success) and dist\_upgrade Similarly: when: ${dist\_upgrade} Should be: when: dist\_upgrade ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Rodenberg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@Alex\_Rodenberg](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Alex_Rodenberg)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 2:57pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ubuntu-release-upgrade/13773/3 "2013-10-29T14:57:41Z")
do-release-upgrade is slow… can take from 1 - 2 hours to complete depending on your internet speeds. Have you checked the screen that it creates during the processing when you think it is idling ? do a: sudo screen -list It should list the one running there with something like this: There is a screen on: 2953.ubuntu-release-upgrade-screen-window (09/13/2012 04:48:02 AM) (Detached) 1 Socket in /var/run/screen/S-root. Then you can run: sudo screen -d -r root/2953.ubuntu-release-upgrade-screen-window I’m not 100% sure that screen gets run when you do a DistUpgradeViewNonInteractive… but have a look… I would suggest running this command without waiting for it in a shell script or something like that, so Ansible doesn’t wait forever/until SSH times out. As this can’t really be timed or checked if succeeded before the machine have rebooted and you see a new distro version. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_DeHaan2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Michael\_DeHaan2](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Michael_DeHaan2)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2013, 1:54am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ubuntu-release-upgrade/13773/4 "2013-10-30T01:54:31Z")
Ansible has an async option that can be used to poll on long running tasks, BTW. ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Rodenberg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@Alex\_Rodenberg](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Alex_Rodenberg)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 10:48am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ubuntu-release-upgrade/13773/5 "2013-11-01T10:48:31Z")
Nice I didn’t even notice that. What would happen if the box restarts though ? (Which happens after do-release-upgrade is done) ---
**Author:** ![Alex\_Rodenberg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47774/32.png) [@Alex\_Rodenberg](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Alex_Rodenberg)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2013, 10:49am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ubuntu-release-upgrade/13773/6 "2013-11-01T10:49:26Z")
At least one can run it with poll 0, but would be cool if it can still run after reboot to continue doing a play.