hey all,
its been a little while since ive used linux (suse). i was just wondering does suse now have the ability to update version via auto updates?
for example, if i had 11.0, theh next week 11.1 comes out, can it upgrade to 11.1 via the online updates? or does it have to be done via disc?
if via disc, is it a fairly seemless transition with no loss of data?
In answer to your questions:
No the Updates in 11.0 will not upgrade you to 11.1
There are number of options available for upgrade, none of which should pose any danger of data loss - though we would always suggest a backup of your user files.
Many will re-install to get to 11.1 - probably just keeping /home untouched. Which, yes - means a bit of work. But it shouldn’t take more than 1 hour to get you back to square one.
Some may do a distribution upgrade with zypper. Though this can be tricky.
How do you do a distribution upgrade using zypper?
Well, officially I have to say I’m not sure. So you might want to wait on that. Though I did just do it a virtual machine of OS11.0 and did a zypper dup to OS11.1 beta
I removed all the 11 repo’s and put in oss, non-oss and updates for 11.1
then a system wide update all in yast
then reboot to level 3 and zypper dup
Any dependency problems or broken packages?
No. But all I had was pretty much the basic 11.0 install, but I had already gone to kde4.2 beta in the 11.0 install, I forgot to mention, so I added those repo’s for 11.1 too
One or two dependency issues, but easy enough to work around/resolve.
zypper dup -l the -l is to accept any license questions
Geoff
i have to comment and say, personally i think its pathetic not to have an update system.
whats the point of all this beautiful ‘stability’ when you have to reinstall your pc every 6 months with a new version.
I was hoping i wouldnt find a thread like this telling me to do all kinds of weird crap when all i want is an upgraded suse with exactly what i have on my system now.
Disgruntled.
Actually you will see if you read the thread, that an update method was described.
A move to Linux requires that you loose the Windows update mentality - which requires you to give all control to the M$ boffins. Umm…No thanks.
It takes me less than an hour to do a Full OS11.0 install with all the 3rd party apps I need. That’s keeping all /home as is.
Compare that to a friends borked Vista I did a recovery on recently. Took 5hrs. Jeepers! That is crazy.
I think the installation DVD has option to upgrade existing installation? Also I did update my girlfriends computer from 10.3 -> 11.0 by following the guide here and it worked very nicely.
Also re-installing the whole system takes just a little bit over an hour if you’ve been smart and have /home on separate partition. That way you re-install the whole system and can have your old settings and data back by just mounting the partition back to its proper place.
Also who says you have to update to 11.1 at all? I believe 11.0 will be supported for quite a long time still.
I’ve used the update method on the DVD a couple of time with no problems. I am getting to prefer zypper dup (never tried the -l switch… nice tip). Either way, its a pretty simple upgrade path.
One of the reasons to use linux is that you don’t get an AUTO-update. You get to choose if and when you want an update.
This is my first venture into Linux after trying other variants, I finally settled with OpenSuSE 11. Mostly using it as a server operating system rather than desktop and currently has 3 dedicated servers running OS11 in a few datacenters around the globe though another 12 of my servers are in FreeBSD (slowly changing this to OS11).
Here’s my problem:
Upgrade option via DVD is totally impossible since I do not have access to the server
Asking data center to put the DVD into the server will probably cost me more
I need the latest Xen 3.3.1 kernel in 11.1 to run FreeBSD virtual machine
So how do I update this? I need run only a few applications in the each of the server and it requires latest xen and linux kernel and Linux HA. I dont need desktop KDE, GNOME and other fancy stuff.
Is there any option just to upgrade the kernel?