I am currently using 12.2 and hardly 9 days to go for the next release i.e., 12.3 i was a very amazed and also a bit scary since i will have to plan for a hard day to update my laptop to 12.3. Can anyone suggest me a foolproof way of upgrading the system? reinstalling the OS is ultimated not possible for me since i have lots of data saved in my computer and can’t afford to lose them.
On 2013-03-04 17:56, cakarunkumar wrote:
>
> Dear friends
>
> I am currently using 12.2 and hardly 9 days to go for the next release
> i.e., 12.3 i was a very amazed and also a bit scary since i will have to
> plan for a hard day to update my laptop to 12.3. Can anyone suggest me a
> foolproof way of upgrading the system? reinstalling the OS is ultimated
> not possible for me since i have lots of data saved in my computer and
> can’t afford to lose them.
Any sane upgrade strategy includes doing a backup of your system. There
is no foolproof method in computing.
I never would go for a new version on day 1 of it’s release. I would at least wait for a few months, watch the forums and wait for the dust to settle down.
It is even quite possible that I would skip a version (I e.g. went from 11.2 to 12.2), when there is nothing new in the new version that I have to use (e.g. because of new hardware not supported by the old version, or a new osftware feature that I realy need).
About the data on your system. I hope you have all that data in a separate /home partition (or similar partitioned it away froom the root partition), then it is very easy to keep it all intact. (But as said above: you should backup, but I guess you already backup on a daily or weekly base).
@op -
Wait for a few days for the dust to settle down after the release. Many bugs discovered post release may get squished within a week of release. Many repos like packman would not be available immediately after release except for OSS,Non-OSS,Update,Non-OSS Update. Download DVD. Check the ISO against the downloaded MD5 . Finally write the ISO onto a DVD at lowest speed. When installing perform disk integrity check.
personally i don’t use any of those ways because i think are far too
likely to fail!
instead i save off all data (two copies actually…one not kept in
this dwelling) and then fresh format the internal disk and build the
system from the ground up, again…i keep a list of the changes i
made to the current openSUSE (updating that list as i make changes)
and use it to quickly add back in the software i use and etc…
and, by the way i won’t be installing 12.3 anytime soon–i’d rather
have a dependable system…and, for my money 12.2 is not ready yet
either…
step one: back up all your data to an off machine location/device/media
step two: make sure that saved data can be retrieved and restored to
disk, perfectly
Don’t risk ignoring Step 2 - I did once by backing up onto a USB drive, didn’t test the data, wiped my main hard disc and when I came to copy my data back the usb drive was faulty and hadn’t correctly saved the data.
Indeed - My question would be, can you afford not to backup your data ? External USB hard drives are relatively inexpensive.
I’m still running openSUSE-12.1 on my main PC (and plan to update to 12.2 in the near future) … so I note if data loss is a concern, then there is no rush to update to 12.3 (unless you have other driving reason to do such an update).
One approach would be NOT update to 12.3 yet, wait until you can afford to purchase a relatively inexpensive external hard drive, purchase the external drive (when you can afford it), backup your data, check the quality of your backup, and only then do your openSUSE-12.3 update/install.
I do have a back up strategy in place and i regularly back up all the critical files to a separate partition created purely for the purpose of back up. will also take an off site back up hence forth as suggested by everyone.
As suggested by most of the senior members i will wait for a few weeks for the distribution to settle and update after that.
The reason i said reinstalling of OS is ultimated not possible was since i will not only loose my file (which any way i can restore from my back up), but i have extensively worked on the shortcuts to suit me(example, tapping power button while the power is on will put my laptop to sleep, while running on battery the same function will hibernate my laptop, and meta+space key will pop up Application launcher and so on…) if i have to reinstall the newer version i have to rework on this short cuts. kindly suggest me any way out for this (or) can anyone specify on which folders these shortcuts are stored so that i can even back up that folder.
What you describe are mostly things configured in the desktop and not in the system. Is that correct? Then you will not loose them. At least when you keep your home directory untouched. And that is mostly done because it is the default to have a separate /home partition and thus all the data of all the users are there and are not touched by a system installation. When you do not have a separate /home partition, then a backup/restore will do the same of course.
Yes the things i specified are configured in the desktop. it was a great news that i will not lose any of those if i take a back up of the home folder. As you have suggested i remember not touching the option create separate home folder, hence by default a separate folder was created which i can also include in the back up before upgrade.
And just to justify my eagerness to upgrade to 12.3 is because of the following reasons: I firmly believe that there will be upgraded security and more small things taken care of since there is a kernel upgrade and an KDE upgrade (if i am not wrong?) To illustrate I faced an issue in 12.1 because of which whenever I tried to adjust the screen brightness or when the system done it on its own when changing from power to battery or vice versa the screen blinks continuously and the system hangs!!!. I tried reinstalling the OS, but no change and the problem creped in after the 1st system update. I even tried using a different distro (ubuntu) to just cross verify whether it was my hardware fault or the OS fault, but i faced the same issue after first system update] this issue was automatically resolved in 12.2.
As i am a novice i will wait for some weeks before upgrading to allow the release to stabilise as suggested by all of you
I dont want to blame anyone for the screen brightness related bug. I didnt report it in opensuse forum but posted a question regarding the same in ubuntu forum [ubuntu] Screen Dim starting to blink and system hangs]([ubuntu] Screen Dim starting to blink and system hangs). I thought since it was a kernel related bug reporting it in one forum will do the job and moreover i had a screen shot of the issue in ubuntu, hence i thought it to better to post it there.
Thank you, I will follow your inputs when I come accross any bugs in the future and report the same in the page specified by you, will also read the attached document.
On 2013-05-04 16:46, americast wrote:
>
> I want to do a fresh install without formatting /home. Is it possible to
> keep back all my favourite apps?
You should have asked this in a new thread with an appropriate tittle.
The short answer to your question is “no”.
You can create a list of rpms in advance, and use it, somehow, to
reinstall them again. I don’t know a good way to do this in a way that
it doesn’t try to install obsolete packages.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)