I’ve held off from upgrading to the newer version of Leap because it’s NOT a good idea to make changes while you’re working on something big, like my dissertation. The last time I tried an upgrade (as I remember, 15.2 to 15.4), I ended up having to take an entire week to get all of the software I use installed and working - and my setup (three monitors on Dell Optiplex 7010 Desktop with dual soundcards and more) took quite some time to work adequately. I am uncomfortable without having updates, but at the same time I do NOT want to go through that again.
Are there instructions (most recent for upgrading from 15.4) that keeps from having to go through all that nonsense again? I’ve got the important stuff saved (files, documents, etc.) but don’t know how to save programs so that they can be reinstalled without spending days and days.
I won’t upgrade unless I can do it without having to reinstall everything! I am nearly finished and while I have things saved, I cannot afford to be down like that again!
Instructions would be appreciated - or a link to them. I have limited time and energy (health issues) so I really also don’t want to do a lot of searching and reading - I just want to make my system safer and keep going.
To begin with, one should take notes of software to be installed extra and beyond the “standard” installation. As well as that installed from standard repos and of course that coming from elsewhere (repos, or tarballs, or whatever). When you forgot to do that for 15.2, you should at least have understood at your 15.2 > 15.4 experience that it is a good idea to have that. When you do not have any notes, I see no way the people here on the forums can help you there.
In general, doing an upgrade (e.g. on-line, but also using the Upgrade feature of the install ISO) will bring you the newer versions of all software from the standard repos. And going over to the new version of other repos (like Packman) and updating from them will do the same for those packages.
Keeping the sustem configurations (mostly in /etc) will be guaranteed by the fact that it is kept (but use rpmconfigcheck for checking there).
User data is normally in the home directories of the users (including desktop and program configurations), which themselves are in /home. Thus having a separate file system for /home will leave them untouched. Else you will have to save them first and restore them later.
These are the general mechanisms. And only you can find out what is exactly to be done and where the critical points are. Depending on your file system layout, the users you have (and what they do/use), services you have running, databases you have, etc., etc. When it comes to details you can of course always ask advice here, but you are the system manager and the starting point of knowledge about your system.
And take note of the pointers to upgrading in the Release Notes.
Once the Upgrade has completed, there’s a little bit of housekeeping to be done –
“rpmconfigcheck” – check for any system configuration files which have been updated and changed due to the upgrade.
In YaST Software Management, review any orphaned packages and, usually, simply remove them.
In YaST Software Management, review the list of recommended packages – a system upgrade often changes what’s recommended …
When upgrading, reduce the list of Repositories to only the openSUSE Repositories plus, possibly, a Packman Repository –
When the upgrade has completed, reactivate the 3rd-Party Repositories – change them to point to their Leap 15.6 locations – and update to the 3rd-Party package versions built for Leap 15.6.
Apart from that, there’s usually not anything else to be done –
You could check for any User systemd issues –
> systemctl --user list-unit-files
I had one user where the systemd GPG-Agent Sockets were incorrectly configured but, that issue could well have occurred with an earlier Leap version and a “gpg2” package change –
Upgrading sometimes uncovers issues which were lurking undiscovered in the system for more than a little bit of time …
That is exactly the sort of information/help I needed. As you’d quoted - I don’t have a lot of free time or energy (and need something NOT Microsoft or Apple where I don’t have to spend all my time playing system guru) and that is exactly what I was seeking. (I admit I’m also hesitant about the upgrade because it seems every upgrade regardless of type/distro tries to eliminate software I use, like QGis and some more esoteric packages, but need it.)
We have some vicious and persistent hackers in this area so no updates is a bit scary, thus your help is absolutely valuable!
It’s been a few years, but I’d done essentially the same when I moved from Ubuntu to OpenSUSE Leap. I really appreciate your providing the command since I couldn’t remember what I’d done before (and it was for Ubuntu). A fresh listing is a great idea and I was going to look into the command - now I don’t have to do that digging.
I’m about ready to try to reinstall. I found an older hard drive and repartitioned and reformatted it for a backup drive, then copied almost everything to it. That will make any potential loss less of a headache.
I’ve been reading the installation instructions. One thing I’m not clear on - is it necessary to go through 15.4 - 15.5 - 15.6 or just upgrade from 15.4 to 15.6?
I only run the LTS versions and don’t really need the latest bells and whistles (in fact, I try to keep things pretty much the same as far as look-and-feel so I don’t have to deal with much of a learning curve when it comes to operations).
As Gertjan pointed out, there’s possibly nothing special top take care of –
Except for, the “repo-*-update” repositories which appeared in Leap 15.5 –
> zypper repos --uri | grep -E ' Alias |repo-update |repo-backports-update|repo-sle-update'
# | Alias | Name | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh | URI
13 | repo-backports-update | Update repository of openSUSE Backports | Ja | (r ) Ja | Ja | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/15.6/backports/
24 | repo-sle-update | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 | Ja | (r ) Ja | Ja | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/15.6/sle/
25 | repo-update | Hauptaktualisierungs-Repository | Ja | (r ) Ja | Ja | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/15.6/oss
>
Please check that these Repositories are present and refreshed for Leap 15.6 before performing the Distribution Upgrade.
If, your system Filesystem is Btrfs, please check that ‘/var/cache/’ is located on a separate Volume.
Up and running! All of the suggestions and advice really helped!
I had to fight with the computer - the upgrade kept wanting to delete the software I use a lot because some of the files were “obsolete”. I was able to get around that, but it got a little tedious…
I’m now fighting an old problem which happened during the last two upgrades - all of my files for the Desktop aren’t showing (they’re in the Desktop folder but don’t appear). Once I remember how to fix that, I should be good to go.
Thanks for the reply. “Properties” is not listed when you right-click on the Desktop. I’m starting to try to troubleshoot this problem - it may be a bug due to the bug report I found from someone who upgraded to 15.6 and had this exact problem. So far I’ve not found a setting anywhere (Dconf editor, Tweaks, etc.) that can fix it - and have tried the couple of suggestions I’ve found (so far).
It’s kind of frustrating because I had a specific structure to my desktop - arranged for maximum efficiency (for me).
