I’ve got an old Compaq Armada laptop (850 mhz PIII processor, 512mb RAM, 30GB HD, DVD ROM) that I’ve been running OpenSUSE 11.1 on in a dual boot configuration with WinXP for almost a year. I’ve downloaded and burned a LiveCD of OpenSUSE 11.2 and booted the computer with it. Very impressive. I want to install it on the HD without doing a clean install. That is, I want to replace 11.1 and keep the WinXP partition intact. My biggest trepidation is getting the wireless card configured again. It was a bear the first time. Is there a way to update OpenSUSE without losing those settings?
Hi,
There is an upgrade option on the DVD, that’s probably your best option; however as I haven’t used this, I can’t tell you anything about it.
The alternative would be to change the repositories from 11.1 to 11.2, then
sudo zypper up
But I’d wait for confirmation from someone more knowledgeable before trying this.
Also if you do try the ‘dup’ way, make sure it finishes or you’ll end up with a mess.
Regards,
Barry.
Actually I would choose a fresh install, overwrite root but not reformat home
Upgrade is tricky and not very reliable IMO. One comment here suggests changing your repo’s and doing zypper up
Actually it’s zypper dup
And there is more to it than that. You didn’t say what desktop you have been using. kde3 is no longer available so if you are using it, forget the upgrade. And if you have a stack of 3rd party packages (eg; Packman) it compounds the difficulty.
So I recommend fresh install with the possibility of keeping /home. But that means you keep ext3 where ext4 is default (it is possible to make the change in place, but that’s amother issue).
Are you seeing the situation?
Backup - Fresh install from DVD (not CD with your RAM). Format / and /home to ext4
In addition to wireless being a pain, you will also find ATI hardware “may” be a pain in 11.2. What graphic hardware does your Compaq have ?
I believe most the important settings for wireless are stored somewhere in /etc/ so you could store those. (simply back up all of /etc on an external hard drive).
Or better yet, ask the question on our wireless subforum area, stating you plan to update to 11.2 and you wish to know what files should you keep backed up somewhere, so as to help when installing 11.2. Don’t forget to tell the users on the wireless forum EXACTLY what wireless device you are using.
I LIKE that idea. Personally, I’m going to follow the suggestion to discover where my wifi settings are. I’ve got 11.1 on my laptop, and it got the wifi working with NO problem!
I’ve got 3 points, 2 about reinstalling vs upgrade, and one IMPORTANT one about /home! Since /home is important, I’ll state it first.
Re: the suggestion about re-using /home: You **must **first answer this question: Do you have a separate /home partition?IF you have /home on a separate partition, you maybe can do an install that will keep it. I DON’T know if the Suse installer will recognize and properly use a separate /home partition, but there are ways to re-use /home if it won’t. I DO know that some other distro’s installers DON’T properly use an existing separate /home partition, and will just wipe one out. Some others will properly use it. I’ve seen both. I will let others here speak to the capabilities of the openSuse installer - I haven’t used it enough.
I have a nice how-to on re-using /home, if you want it, just say so. If you have an external hard drive, you might just back up your /home (make sure you get the hidden files), and reinstall it later. A ton of your settings are in those hidden files in /home. If you don’t have a separate /home, imo go the backup route. Creating a new /home partition will be easier when done with a new install.
That said, I’ll second the suggestion that re-installing is probably the easier option. I haven’t tried to upgrade Suse, but I think I’ll reinstall instead, because I HAVE tried to upgrade Fedora, Vector, Ubuntu, and Debian this year. I thought the Ubuntu was successful until a couple of hours ago, when I discovered my sound is partly broken. The others had major fail points. All fixable, of course, but at the possible cost of many hours.
Last, if you have time, try the upgrade path. It it doesn’t work, reinstall! The only investment is time.
Educating myself this morn. Installed 11.2 on a Debian box and re-used my /home partition. The openSUSE installer WILL re-use an existing /home properly. I say this because it just did. lol! You have to edit the partition table correctly, but if you feel comfortable doing the advance partitioning in the installer, you should be fine. As a matter of fact, the openSUSE installer gave me more advanced partitioning options than I recall seeing in any other installer’s partitioning section! Impressive.
Re: the suggestion about re-using /home: You must first answer this question: Do you have a separate /home partition?IF you have /home on a separate partition, you maybe can do an install that will keep it. I DON’T know if the Suse installer will recognize and properly use a separate /home partition, but there are ways to re-use /home if it won’t. I DO know that some other distro’s installers DON’T properly use an existing separate /home partition, and will just wipe one out. Some others will properly use it. I’ve seen both. I will let others here speak to the capabilities of the openSuse installer - I haven’t used it enough.
Written from openSUSE 11.2 Gnome.
The DVD would be my first option except that I don’t have a functioning DVD burner. For that reason, I’m limited to a CD. I’m presently running OpenSuse 11.1 Genome but the disc I’ve burned is OpenSuse 11.2 KDE.
I do have an external 250GB USB hard drive that I plan to backup the entire contents of the laptop on before I upgrade. Any suggestions of a utility to do this? Any way to run the DVD installer from the HD?
Speaking from recent experience (and on-going trials and tribulations) the 11.1 => 11.2 upgrade mostly works. For me one of the biggest annoyances is that KDE4 uses a different set of configuration files than does the prior KDE3x. For example my home directory now has both a ./.kde and ./.kde4 subdirectories. …and if you are using KDE4 apps, those old/prior configurations will be ignored. Thus you may find yourself reestablishing konsole, kmail, the desktop etc with the settings you had with 11.1
Still the upgrade mostly works. However it may require extra work on your part. Some annoyances for 11.1 will remain… Eg. that pesky insistence on ldap being up and running – check your /var/log/messages
Warning: backup your important files before upgrading or doing a fresh install. You may want to refer to or even re-use those older config files.
Bonne chance!
I’d do a fresh install just to take advantage of ext4 personally. It makes openSUSE 11.2 snappier.