Re: strangest things after upgrade from 8 to 9
On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 10:56:51AM -0800, David Christensen wrote:
> On 12/29/18 6:36 AM, mikesa@corigroup.it wrote:
> > I couple of days ago I've upgraded from 8 (jessie) to 9 (stretch) ...
>
> In years past, I tried doing major version upgrades in-place. It seemed
> like no matter how many issues I tracked down and fixed, another would
> emerge. I had no confidence in the result.
>
>
> So, now I back up/ archive system configuration files and user data, pull
> the system drive, install a wiped system drive, do a fresh install, and
> reconfigure/ restore. I use this process both for major version upgrades
> and also for re-installs when the system has become crufty or doesn't feel
> right. This process is expedited by using small, dedicated system drives
> (16 GB), keeping my system configuration files in a version control system
> (CVS), and keeping my user data in CVS or on a file server. User e-mail
> folders are the only item that I need to manually backup and restore.
>
On the other hand, I have done in-place upgrades of Debian on every
occasion save one: when I moved my main personal file server from 32-bit
to 64-bit after a hardware swap.
Debian's upgrade process is rather robust. So much so, that people
complaining to Red Hat that Debian managed to provide robust in-place
upgrades since forever while people paying $$$ for RHEL support
contracts were always told, "wipe and reinstall" was at least part of
what moved Red Hat to start providing support for in-place upgrades (at
least as of RHEL7, if I understand correctly).
The problem that people tend to encounter is when they either don't read
and follow the instructions in the release notes for the new release or
have packages installed from low quality third party sources. There
have been some problematic transitions (e.g., the one involving udev was
a good example) and there are times when maintainers of external
repositories do not keep their packages updated.
Regards,
-Roberto
--
Roberto C. Sánchez
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