upgrade mysql 5.1 to 5.5 on Ubuntu 11.10 I currently have mysql server 5.1  installed via apt-get on my production Ubuntu 11.10 server

root@Ubuntu-1110-oneiric-64-minimal$ dpkg --get-selections | grep sql-server   
mysql-server                    install 
mysql-server-5.1                install 
mysql-server- core-5.1          install


I would like to upgrade this to 5.6, but the mysql docs seem to suggest upgrading to 5.5 first, and from there to 5.6.

I've seen various lengthy guides describing how to upgrade from 5.1 to 5.5, but they all seem to describe how to upgrade by installing the tarball rather than using the package manager. Is there a simpler to upgrade using the package manager if the current version was installed using apt-get.

Obviously I want my existing configuration and databases to be retained after the upgrade and I will be sure to backup my databases using mysqldump before performing the upgrade.
I'm not sure about your package management issues but wanted to point out that the docs Say that you should completely reload your data using mysqldump when upgrading from a previous minor version.  So once you have your complete mysqldump w/ --all-databases --events --routines, be sure to import that into the new binaries.