Context: I am looking to upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

I performed following steps:

$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt upgrade -y $ sudo reboot $ sudo apt --purge autoremove $ sudo apt install update-manager-core -y $ sudo do-release-upgrade -d

And this where I get the Py3 error message (in the subject)

I spent about 3 hours researching on what could be the problem. I also navigated to threads for the same question asked earlier but have not been able to figure out to fix the problem. I am hoping folks could help me here...

$ python --version Python 2.7.17 $ python3 --version Python 3.7.5 $ update-alternatives --list python3 /usr/bin/python3.6 /usr/bin/python3.7

I checked the config, ofcourse nothing shows up for python, for python3 I have 3.6 and 3.7. I have selected 3.7 as default.

Using Ubuntu version below:

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=18.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=bionic DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS"

And some more details:

$ ls -l /usr/bin/python3 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 25 Dec 15 23:08 /usr/bin/python3 -> /etc/alternatives/python3

What more do I need to do fix the symlink problem?

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3 Answers

I believe this is a know issue.

The suggested workaround is to remove the python’s binary in /usr/bin and then to create a symlink and perform the upgrade:

sudo rm /usr/bin/python sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/python sudo apt upgrade do-release-upgrade

Let me know how it goes.

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Solution:

I pointed python3.6 to python3

Use Ubuntu pkgd python or python3 and not the upgraded versions!

Thanks all for the help. Sometimes you have to sweat all day to think of a small minor adjustment.

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Which operating system version do you use ?
The error means that the OS wants a link to an other python version.
Please post your /etc/issue
Try:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall python3

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