I was affected by this on a 24.04 -> 26.04.1 LTS upgrade (Ubuntu Desktop, not server), and the fix in 1:25.10.6 does not cover that path.
What happened: - Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 does not ship screen either. On my system screen was not installed before the upgrade (dpkg.log shows it was first installed at 21:28 *during* the upgrade, pulled in as a new dependency of the resolute ubuntu-release-upgrader-core). - do-release-upgrade (DistUpgradeViewText, run from GNOME Terminal) logged "screen could not be run" at startup and continued without screen. The screen check runs before checkViewDepends() and before any packages are installed, so a Depends: screen on the new upgrader package cannot help someone starting from noble. - Half an hour later my desktop session was terminated by an unrelated bug (a systemd daemon-reload unmounting the ZFS datasets, reported separately as #2168897). Because the upgrader was not inside screen, the terminal took the upgrader and dpkg with it, dpkg was left waiting at a conffile prompt with no terminal, and I had to finish the upgrade in recovery mode. Since 24.04 -> 26.04 is the LTS-to-LTS path that most desktop users will take, could this be handled for noble as well? Either: 1. SRU the Depends: screen to ubuntu-release-upgrader-core in noble (and plucky), so the package is present before the upgrade starts, or 2. have the downloaded upgrader install screen itself before re-execing (checkViewDepends() already has a "FIXME: instead of error out, fetch and install it here" comment), which would fix the problem regardless of the starting release. Log excerpt from /var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log: 2026-09-29 20:52:10,180 INFO release-upgrader version '26.04.25' started 2026-09-29 20:52:10,212 INFO screen could not be run 2026-09-29 20:52:10,254 DEBUG Using 'DistUpgradeViewText' view 2026-09-29 20:52:11,204 DEBUG checkViewDepends() and from /var/log/dpkg.log: 2026-09-29 21:28:51 install screen:amd64 <none> 4.9.1-3ubuntu2 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2116874 Title: `do-release-upgrade` as CLI, run with DistUpgradeViewText, requires screen but does not declare dependency To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/+bug/2116874/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
