upgrade opensuse

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hello,

First I’m french so excuse me for my approximate english :wink:

I’m a fedora user and what I don’t appreciate with fedora is the new complete installation for each new version.

My question is : Can we upgrade openSUSE (11.2 => 11.3 => …) via internet without re-install the OS ?
And is it safe ?

Thanks very much,
Thomas

#2

I haven’t tried the betas, but going by past form you should be offered an upgrade option by the installer. You could then use the network install cd to do an upgrade over the internet. If it doesn’t work out you can then do a fresh install.
Like most others I prefer a fresh install because there are sometimes bits of the new version that don’t work so well.
This isn’t a big deal as long as you have a separate /home partition for your personal data.
If you want to keep configs, you could also have a separate /var partition.

#3

Bienvenu içi !!!

FYI: we have a french subforum !!!

Upgrading is something that’s a work in progress. For Fedora as well as openSUSE. I’ve upgraded my server from 11.1 to 11.2, no real issues.

#4

Le 28/04/2010 11:06, Neodyme a écrit :

> My question is : Can we upgrade openSUSE (11.2 => 11.3 => …) via
> internet without re-install the OS ?

yes

> And is it safe ?

no

I just document (in french) y own method here:
http://forums.opensuse.org/language-specific-forums/francais-french/contributions/documentez/437903-passer-la-derniere-version-de-la-distribution.html

whatever system you use, writing on top of your system is not safe.
Any problem can kill your data. Think of a voltage drop during the update?

jdd

#5

I don’t quite agree. Last year I had a power outage during a kernel update which messed up my server. That’s not exclusively for upgrading. Still I knew, my /home and other partitions would still be there.
As for everything: BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP and check what’s been backed up.

#6

thanks guys.

on Ubuntu, you can easily upgrade with aptitude.
On my parent’s desktop, ubuntu is installed for 1 year and I’ve upgrade twice.

why others distros don’t use similar routine ?

#7

Le 28/04/2010 12:06, Knurpht a écrit :

> I don’t quite agree. Last year I had a power outage during a kernel
> update which messed up my server. That’s not exclusively for upgrading.
> Still I knew, my /home and other partitions would still be there.
> As for everything: BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP and check what’s been
> backed up.
>
>

sure, But As I always do a fresh install, I staill have the old
install for emergency use. The only problem that can delay me is a
grub problem…

jdd

#8

Le 28/04/2010 12:26, Neodyme a écrit :
>
> thanks guys.
>
> on Ubuntu, you can easily upgrade with aptitude.
> On my parent’s desktop, ubuntu is installed for 1 year and I’ve upgrade
> twice.
>
> why others distros don’t use similar routine ?
>
>
you can. Change repositories and do ‘zypper dup’

but I already killed debian install such way. Anybody take his own risks

jdd