Hi,
I have documented the offline upgrade process, the one that is done via
booting the DVD and choosing “upgrade”. It is the classic alternative to
the online upgrade run via “zypper dup”.
This documentation is a work in progress, it is not yet finished, but it is
available to people wanting to do an upgrade.
<http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Offline_upgrade>
>http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade>
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
Good stuff.
Recommend modifying or enhancing:
My personal experience upgrading from 11.3 > 12.1 surprised me, I thought I had sufficient space (6gb free space on the root partition), but it came dangerously close to being insufficient, and this was after I thought I had taken proper steps by cleaning out my Documents, Downloads, Pictures and Videos files from my /home partition, moving them to an external drive followed by cleaning out my /tmp and /var/tmp directories. When my upgrade barely completed (was holding my breath at the end as the upgrade dragged on), there was less than 1GB free space remaining and that was sufficient only to be able to logon with the root account… The system wouldn’t let me in using any of my other configured “normal” User accounts until I used gparted live to give my root partition more space.
Note any long-running documented issues, like support for nVidia GPUs. In fact, I’d recommend either referencing my bug report or copying over sections from my bug report to your document.
I wonder if enough emphasis has been placed in the Release Notes about the important systemd changes, particularly the fact that any configured custom services would probably bork systemd, so you need to undo those and re-do them new ways <after> the upgrade… or you need to switch from systemd to sysvinit.
Good Stuff,
TS
On 2012-02-19 23:26, tsu2 wrote:
>
> Good stuff.
Thanks 
I have an issue with adding the rest of the photos, though.
> Recommend modifying or enhancing:
>
> - Check for free space. Yes. But, you don’t offer a guideline to
> determine if there is sufficient free space. For starters, the User
> needs sufficient space for
I don’t have a figure. Several gigabytes, I guess.
I forgot! There was an scale on some screen gauging the needed space for
the installation. I think that the feature has been removed.
>
> 1. The automatic backup
That is pretty small. Mine uses 410 MiB, and is several versions old.
> 2. Temp space to support file move/copy/install
> 3. There <might> be a bug in the 12.1 Upgrade, I was surprised numerous
> apps I had once installed but then removed were found and installed anew
> by the upgrade.
Ah, but that’s a feature!
Here:
···················
Update Options
The possibilities are to update based on the patterns selected (it is
possible to change them), or in the currently installed packages only. The
second option results in a system very close to the original one, and the
first option is closer to what a newly installed system would be. This is
the default and probably a better choice.
···················
I should add there that the upgrade based in pattern can result in
reinstalling apps you removed previously.
>
> My personal experience upgrading from 11.3 > 12.1 surprised me, I
> thought I had sufficient space (6gb free space on the root partition),
> but it came dangerously close to being insufficient, and this was after
> I thought I had taken proper steps by cleaning out my Documents,
> Downloads, Pictures and Videos files from my /home partition,
But home is not touched.
> moving
> them to an external drive followed by cleaning out my /tmp and /var/tmp
> directories. When my upgrade barely completed (was holding my breath at
> the end as the upgrade dragged on), there was less than 1GB free space
> remaining and that was sufficient only to be able to logon with the root
> account… The system wouldn’t let me in using any of my other
> configured “normal” User accounts until I used gparted live to give my
> root partition more space.
Wow.
My upgrade of 7.3 to 8.1 or thereabouts was destroyed because my /usr
partition was not mounted and root overflowed. I had to recover from the
backup.
> 2. Note any long-running documented issues, like support for nVidia
> GPUs. In fact, I’d recommend either referencing my bug report or copying
> over sections from my bug report to your document.
Give me links
My memory is not that good.
I did not mention graphics because I have not personally experienced
problems there. Yes, one side effect of upgrading is that the nvidia/ati
driver can be removed and you are restored to the opensource driver. In
fact, I do not know what is supposed to happen.
This is one of the reasons I recommend having done a small fresh install on
a spare partition.
> 3. I wonder if enough emphasis has been placed in the Release Notes
> about the important systemd changes, particularly the fact that any
> configured custom services would probably bork systemd, so you need to
> undo those and re-do them new ways <after> the upgrade… or you need to
> switch from systemd to sysvinit.
Ah, but I skipped commenting on that problem by choosing a 11.3 to 11.4
upgrade 
I could also recommend delaying the upgrade for a month, and reading the
forum or mail list to detect issues.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)