Here Upgrade – openSUSE I read that an upgrade should be done only to the next version.
Does this also apply to upgrades done via DVD? Can I upgrade a 10.3 server directly to 11.2 using a DVD? I would prefer to avoid a new installation because I want to save our configuration for postfix, apache, samba, …
Thanks for answering
–hieronymus99
hieronymus99 wrote:
> Does this also apply to upgrades done via DVD?
yes
> Can I upgrade a 10.3 server directly to 11.2 using a DVD?
not supported…
been tried and you can search the fora here and find few if any claims
of totaly happiness afterwards…
there are some who ask and are told “not supported” and then come back
and defiantly/triumphantly say “well *i/ did it…no problems”…and
then the questions begin…all kinds of little things here and
there…strange little things…
the thing is that openSUSE is moving very fast…there are LOTs of
differences between 10.3 and 11.2, the best way, and only way i would
recommend would be to save securely off machine and with assured
recall all your data and configuration parameters/files…
then use an md5sum checked perfect install DVD to format and install…
careful though, the 11.2 DVD will default install a desktop
environment…so, when you get to that page in the install script
click away from KDE to Other, and then (i forget, something like)
‘minimum text install’ (silly it doesn’t even say “server”)
but, i know you do not like what i just said, so go ahead and use the
forums advanced search function and see if you find a better way…
> I would prefer to avoid a new
> installation because I want to save our configuration for postfix,
> apache, samba, …
understand…save it off machine and then rebuild the config once 11.2
is in…
you know that with a new release every eight months and three releases
supported at a time <http://en.opensuse.org/SUSE_Linux_Lifetime> you
need to upgrade every year…
or move to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 
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I think you will be in for a lot of pain if you try to upgrade directly. Even with stepwise upgrade there is a fair bit of pain. Just as an example, if you were using PHP, you might find that 5.3 breaks web apps that need 5.2. For sure I would never do it on a production machine. It’s what keeps sysadmins in work, that automated update software can never handle every situation.
Thanks for your thoughts…
Can I find info somewhere which particular packages make problems / have changes that break old configurations?
We don’t use that much packages, only the usual server stuff: postfix, apache, samba, subversion, mysql
I understand php could pose a problem since there are some applications that require the old version… any more?
I don’t upgrade, I install the latest alongside the older, only when I am happy with the config do I start using the latest.
Of course I am only running a desktop, But I feel something similar could be applied to a server
The problem is this sort of info is scattered all over the place. Sysadmins don’t generally blog about moving openSUSE 10.3 to 11.2. It’s rare that you will find somebody in exactly the same situation as you. You might however see blogs/email about “problem with moving from Samba 3.2 to Samba 3.3”, “problems going from postfix 2.1 to postfix 2.3”, “configuration of named has changed between 8.2 and 8.4” and that sort of thing. So you might have to do some searching along those lines.
Or you could just go ahead and do the migration on a test server and see what differences need to be ironed out. Even if you were to find web pages about migrating various components, they might not cover every little detail. You’ll just have to do it to find out and fix things as you go.
That’s why you would not want to do a migration like this on a production server. You would be under extreme time pressure to get things running again after the migration. Ideally you would have a parallel server set up to receive the new OS and then manage a cutover.