So I am wanting to upgrade my system from 11.2 to 11.3, but I have been putting it off for a while. I am considering trying either the CLI or GUI methods of upgrading without doing a fresh install but it seems like that is a somewhat shaky method. I know I have read many threads of horror stories, but for all those who have used that method what is the general consensus? I am going to download 11.3 either way just so I can have it in case, but is it worth it to take the time to try a live upgrade? Right now I am leaning toward a fresh install. Hopefully one day upgrading will be a no brainer from yast as I think that would help openSUSE and linux in general greatly.
So I am wanting to upgrade my system from 11.2 to 11.3, but I have been putting it off for a while. I am considering trying either the CLI or GUI methods of upgrading without doing a fresh install but it seems like that is a somewhat shaky method. I know I have read many threads of horror stories, but for all those who have used that method what is the general consensus? I am going to download 11.3 either way just so I can have it in case, but is it worth it to take the time to try a live upgrade? Right now I am leaning toward a fresh install. Hopefully one day upgrading will be a no brainer from yast as I think that would help openSUSE and linux in general greatly.
Conventional Wisdom says a Clean install is best. However, the upgrade does work AND going from openSUSE 11.2 to 11.3 is a smaller change than any other upgrade. The video setup program sax2 was removed and the Xorg.conf file is not really required so this was one of the big changes between the two and video in general is where the most problems seems to exist. Adding in the nomodeset kernel load option to the openSUSE startup line in the grub menu.lst file seems to be required a lot of the time, particularly when using nVIDIA and AMD/ATI video chipsets. If you maintained a separate /home area. either method should work better than if you did not do so.
Doing an upgrade is the most painless and you always still have the option to do a clean install. While doing a clean install gives you the most stable setup, you must reload all applications that does not come with the base install AND, you must convince the openSUSE installer to replace your old openSUSE when doing a clean install as it does not want to do that by default. Remember on a clean install to do a custom partition setup and remount you existing SWAP, / openSUSE and /home partitions and when /home is separate, do not format the /home partition. In the Partitioner application you right click the existing partition and pick Edit, this very is very important method to know.
Some more wisdom to think about:
- The names sda, sdb, sdc and so forth are determined by how the hardware is plugged together.
- The Logical Drive names HD0, HD1 HD2 and so forth, as far as Grub is concerned, are determined by the /boot/grub/device.map file.
- The actual disk boot order is determined by the BIOS setup AND what ever drive you select as the boot drive, must be HD0 in your device.map file. The other entries may follow anything you like, but if you change who is hd1, then the same change must be made in your grub menu.lst file.
- The mapping location of the Windows drive is determined by the fstab file in the /etc folder. Changing how a drive is connected, has nothing to do with where it is mounted as long as it is the same hard drive.
- By default, the device.map file and the fstab file use the disk by id naming, which means it is normally immune to changing the physical connection of the drive. The Grub boot loaded is affected by this however.
- The grub boot loader can be placed in the MBR (Master Boot Record) or into partitions 1, 2, 3 or 4 ONLY.
- The grub menu.lst file must be located on the same hard drive as the /grub/menu.lst file is located. You can not boot from drive sda with grub and load the menu.lst file from sdb.
There is a nice utility by please_try_again that can help you find your present grub bootloader if you don’t remember what you did before:
Looking for Grub and Windows bootloader in all partitions.
Message #59 has the most recent version of the findgrub script and good luck.
Thank You,
On 2011-01-09 00:06, hito kiri wrote:
>
> So I am wanting to upgrade my system from 11.2 to 11.3, but I have been
> putting it off for a while. I am considering trying either the CLI or
> GUI methods of upgrading without doing a fresh install but it seems like
> that is a somewhat shaky method. I know I have read many threads of
> horror stories, but for all those who have used that method what is the
> general consensus? I am going to download 11.3 either way just so I can
> have it in case, but is it worth it to take the time to try a live
> upgrade? Right now I am leaning toward a fresh install. Hopefully one
> day upgrading will be a no brainer from yast as I think that would help
> openSUSE and linux in general greatly.
Upgrading works, it has worked for many years. It is a bit more difficult
than a new install, but simply because it is more unknown, and the
procedures are different.
Horror histories? Rubbish. You read horror histories because only the
people with problem write asking for help; the successful histories are
untold. >:-P
What is true is that in case of problems you need more experience to solve
them on your own.
There are two main methods: booting from the DVD and choosing upgrade, or
changing the repos to the new openSUSE version and running zypper dup, what
is called a live upgrade. The live upgrade can also be run from inside
YaST, but I don’t remember the module name.
Recommendations:
-
Do a full backup of your current system, regardless of chosen method
(new install or upgrade). If it breaks, or the new system does not work,
you can restore. -
Test the new system in a small spare partition, so that you know before
hand if it works before committing your production system. You can solve
there problems, and use it as a guide to configure the upgraded system
later if it goes bad. I usually do this with the factory version. In
particular, video configuration is different in 11.3
Reading material:
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Installation
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Installation_help
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:How_to_migrate_to_a_new_openSUSE_version
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade
> http://old-en.opensuse.org/How_To_Upgrade_System_with_Separate_/var_Partition
http://old-en.opensuse.org/Testing/Upgrade
> Chapter 14. Upgrading the System and System Changes
>
http://doc.opensuse.org/products/opensuse/openSUSE/opensuse-reference/cha.update.html
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
Sounds like a waste of time to move from 11.2 to 11.3, upgrade or new install, when in they are predicting about 3 months (in March) OS 11.4 will be out. I think you’d serve yourself better by backing preparing your 11.2 system for an 11.4 upgrade or clean install, ie, create and test your backups including those for Apache, MySQL, LDAP, etc.
Try testing with a LiveCD/DVDs of OpenSuse 11.4 RCs before you install.
Just my opinion.
That’s definitely a point worth considering and I think many would agree with that.
But if I can offer a different perspective , some of us don’t like to be on the ‘cutting edge’ of a new release. My wife and I are a hi-tech couple with no children, and we have 4 desktop PCs and two laptop’s in our house. Until just over a week ago, I had 4 of these PC’s running openSUSE-11.3 (3 desktops and 1 laptop). But my main PC which is a Core i7 920, where I do my most critical work, was running openSUSE-11.2. I deliberately kept it there for many months after the 11.3 release, to ensure as many bug fixes as possible were applied. Well now with the SuSE-GmbH team (and vast majority of testing volunteers) are now focused on 11.4 and hence fewer bugs are being examined in 11.3, it meant to me that 11.3 is now much more stable and less likely to see changes. So I took the opportunity to update to 11.3 on that PC, which I did 8 days ago.
I’ll do the same with 11.4 when it comes out. I will put 11.4 on the least important PCs in our apartment, and use them for testing and non-essential things, but my main PC won’t be updated to 11.4 until months after 11.4 is released.
… so yes, I do agree with the sentiment that 11.4 is coming soon and one should consider updating to it, but I also note that some of us like to wait months (in my case almost 1/2 year) after a release before we install it. We value the slight increase in stability, bug fixes and availability of 3rd party apps that much to wait.
On 2011-01-10 08:06, oldcpu wrote:
> … so yes, I do agree with the sentiment that 11.4 is coming soon and
> one should consider updating to it, but I also note that some of us like
> to wait months (in my case almost 1/2 year) after a release before we
> install it. We value the slight increase in stability, bug fixes and
> availability of 3rd party apps that much to wait.
I do the same, but still in 11.2. I don’t like 11.3.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
Yes 11.3 probably has stabilized but my point is why not go through the installation pains of 11.4 at the same time as others? For some of us 11.3 is considered buggy, and 11.4 is supposed to be faster and add bigger improvements. Besides if the OP really wanted stability he (and you) should be using SLED right? I’m still running 11.1 and 11.2, that’s 11.1 on my better PC which never quite works out to be the test PC.
Not necessarily.
On 2011-01-10 18:36, tararpharazon wrote:
> Yes 11.3 probably has stabilized but my point is why not go through
> the installation pains of 11.4 at the same time as others?
Because the idea is never to install a release just after release, but wait until it is stable. At
least, two months. So, installing 11.4 is not an option yet.
When 11.4 is released and we find out how good or bad it really is (the real testing happens in that
period, by hasty people like you >;-) ) then we’ll consider to install it, or not.
> Besides if the OP really wanted stability he (and
> you) should be using SLED right?
If you have the money. And if it has the features you need.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Minas Tirith))
Oldcpu is the rich one here for SLED. I’m running on 2-5 y/o PCs (noted in my sig.), like most I’d rather spend money on hw than sw.
What do you mean never, nothing would ever get installed or update if everybody waited 2 months?
I’m suggesting if you’re going to install the new release a week or 2 after the official release that’s a good enough wait. Show stoppers will have been identified and hopefully fixed. Then there should be some fixes or gotchas that others could help you work around. That is open source right? Sharing solutions?
I can generally wait the extra 2 months but if I’ve skipped a release or I’m waiting for a release (like 11.4) the 2 weeks is enough time for the early adopters to have downloaded their installation disks and I get a better download speeds.
I wish it were so, but in truth it really depends on the user’s hardware, and the 3rd party software that is essential to the user. Often user’s with ATI graphic hardware have to wait months for a proprietary graphic driver to come available. I’ve seen waits as long as 6 months at times. Even worse, my old laptop PC with openSUSE-11.1 is still running 11.1 because no kernel after the 2.6.27 kernel will work on this laptop with the Intel graphic driver, and the FBDEV graphic driver is unacceptably slow.
I have applications I use which are MUST use applications for me, and they are not always ready 2 weeks after a new openSUSE release. Sometimes I resort to trying to build them myself (because they are still not yet packaged for the new release, and sometimes hat in hand I go begging at the Packman packager table, asking that they shuffle packaging priorities so that I can obtain the app that I want to use earlier … ) .
And when these drivers, or apps , are finally made available, they need a run in time, as they are not always stable.
So most the time on my main PC, I just stay on the old openSUSE release for months longer. It is very RARE that every app, and every driver, that I need is ready soon after a new openSUSE release. (note that is not to say I don’t install the new release on the other PC’s in our apartment).
Fortunately not everyone is in the same boat as me, but some users are.
Drifting so far off the OP but I not saying 2-3 weeks or 2 months fits everyone or their hardware.
It’s a matter of choice, I can be happy not using the proprietary video drivers as long a I don’t notice major issues.
Sometimes it takes me months to identify and work around a problem (currently DHCP client thingy).
I’m just suggesting the OP wait and prepare for 11.4, rather than install 11.3. Sort of a skip every other release philosophy.
If 11.4 looks worse than 11.3 or buggy the OP can still install 11.3 but he’s prepared and fully backed up.
On 2011-01-11 00:36, tararpharazon wrote:
> It’s a matter of choice, I can be happy not using the proprietary video
> drivers as long a I don’t notice major issues.
This machine crashes on hibernation with the opensource nvidia driver
(11.2). That’s critical for me.
In my laptop, where I tested 11.3 when it was factory, and beyond, video is
still bad (intel).
So I do not use 11.3. There are versions I have to skip.
Then, as a translator, I usually get a “perking” in the form of the box, so
I wait for it. Some people have got the 11.3 box this January.
I do test the new release, while it is on factory, and make my bugzilla
reports. Then, when it is released, I sit back and watch how others test it
>:-)
Then, as oldcpu says, many repos take ages to update to the new version, so
I have to wait. I can install the new version in a test partition, but the
main partition I consider as “production machine” and has to work reliably.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)