Q:

Upgrade couchdb/erlang on old Ubuntu 10.04

I have an old Ubuntu 10.04 server running an old CouchDB server (1.0.1).
I want to upgrade CouchDB to latest version, but this needs a newer version of erlang. I tried with current repositories (lucid), but there's no upgrade to erlang.
I tried downloading the .deb file from https://www.erlang-solutions.com/downloads/download-erlang-otp but got various errors:
dpkg: considering removing erlang-base in favour of esl-erlang ...
dpkg: no, cannot proceed with removal of erlang-base (--auto-deconfigure will help):
 erlang-crypto depends on erlang-base (= 1:13.b.3-dfsg-2ubuntu2.1) | erlang-base-hipe (= 1:13.b.3-dfsg-2ubuntu2.1)
  erlang-base is to be removed.
dpkg: regarding esl-erlang_16.b~ubuntu~lucid_amd64.deb containing esl-erlang:
 esl-erlang conflicts with erlang-base
  erlang-base (version 1:13.b.3-dfsg-2ubuntu2.1) is present and installed.
dpkg: error processing esl-erlang_16.b~ubuntu~lucid_amd64.deb (--install):
 conflicting packages - not installing esl-erlang
Errors were encountered while processing:
 esl-erlang_16.b~ubuntu~lucid_amd64.deb

Server is used in producction, so I have not much chances to do something wrong.
Anybody knows a reliable way to upgrade CouchDB+erlang on this server ?

A:

One thing I would try is setting up a 10.04 virtual machine on a non prod box to try out any fix first.  You can use VirtualBox if you don't have a vm host already. Install the repository erlang package to replicate your prod issue.
Once you have a safe environment to play in, try using the --auto-deconfigure option mentioned in the error message to get rid of the old Erlang version and install the new one.

