Error messages that make sense

I recently upgraded my Ubuntu installation from 8.04 to the newly-released 8.10. (The Ubuntu releases are designated as Year.Month, hence this is the 2008 October release.) For some reason the login won't complete after the upgrade, so I've been doing some investigation.

I dropped to a recovery console and told it to run a few basic checks. It chewed on that for a while and then came back with this information:

Your system is up-to-date

There are no upgrades available for your system. The upgrade will now be canceled.

Do you want to start the upgrade? [yN]

Umm...