Re: Upgrading the old OS vs. fresh installation of the new OS
On Wednesday 09 March 2011 02:13:17 pm Jason Hsu wrote:
> I'd especially like to hear from those of you who are Linux consultants or
> sysadmins. This is a timely topic given that Debian Squeeze moved from the
> testing branch to the stable branch.
>
> Which do you prefer: Upgrading the old OS or doing a fresh installation? I
> learn towards a fresh installation.
>
> One the one hand, upgrading the old OS is fast and requires no downtime IF
> everything goes well. Of course, that is one big IF, and I'm not sure if
> things have ever gone perfectly in the entire history of the world. Some
> things change from one version of Debian to the next, and what worked in
> the old version won't work at all in the new version, especially in the
> area of configuration files. The more packages you have installed, the
> more problems you'll have.
>
> On the other hand, a fresh installation bypasses the upgrade issues. You
> can always just repeat the installation procedure from the previous version
> of Debian and make adjustments when appropriate. You need to properly back
> up the personal/company files in this case, but you'd have to do that
> anyway as a precaution if you use the upgrade route.
>
> What do you think?
>
> --
> Jason Hsu <jhsu802701@jasonhsu.com>
I find that upgrades work very well for workstations. My workstation has a few
services running, apache, samba, nfs, multi-head xorg file, multiple hard drives
(fstab) I like that I don't have to start over configuring stuff to get back to
where I was. It might depend on how complicated your setup us.
I do like separate partitions/hd for /home, /usr/local & /pub/mirrors. A fresh
would not be a complete disaster.
In my experience upgrades have gone well as long as I read the release note, I
also following this list for heads up on issues.
--
Peace,
Greg
Reply to: