Hi:
Is it recommended and safe to upgrade the system from Leap 42.1 to Leap 15.0. I would like to avoid fresh and clean installation for all costs for the following reasons.
Even worse, there is another server (backup server) having suse 12.2 installed. Any idea how to upgrade this one as well.
Thank you for any suggestion.
Basically, upgrading from one version to another (eiter by using the Upgrade itim of the DVD, or by switching repos and doing zypper dup) is supported from one level to the next.
In your case that would mean 42.1 > 42.2 > 42.3 > 15.0.
But many have skipped some of those steps and went from one 42.n to 15.0. Maybe wait if somebody posts here with experience.
For the 12.2 case, I can only advice a fresh installation. Keep of course all in /home. And make an extra backup of /etc for reference if you are going to setup Apache, etc.
Others may have other hints, so wait for some time before you start.
I upgraded from 42.2 to leap 15 and went ok.
I asked and followed this https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/532048-upgrade-to-leap-15-from-42-3-failed?highlight=upgrade
this https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/532513-first-attempt-to-upgrade-to-leap-15-0-but-15-0-live-KDE-doesnt-works?highlight=upgrade
and this https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/532579-upgrade-to-15-0-but-only-leap-screen?highlight=upgrade
the most important I think are:
1)updete all the updatable in 42.1
2)uninstall nvidia drivers
3)start upgrade to 42.2
4)if the upgrade process shows you repositories to remove, remove all repositories or disable them to correct later
5)if the upgrade process ask to operate manually on software packages do it, it could be long and annoying but in my experience is better to do now than before the upgrade
6)once upgrade is finished boot in 42.2 and update all the updatable
7)start the upgrade to 42.3
8)follow point 4) and 5) , in my exoperience upgrading to 42.3 no manual intervention on packages was needed
9)once upgrade is finished boot in 42.3 and update the updatable
10)start the upgrade to 15.0
11)read the posts above about the “modeset=0” or “nouveau.modeset=0” problem booting the upgrade and after the upgrade at the first boot to 15.0
12)follow point 4) and 5) , in my exoperience upgrading to 15.0 produced a big manual intervention to packages, I choosed to change vendor to opensuse and everything went ok
13)very important follow the posts about “during the upgrade refused the nouveau DRI/3D and removed the block to remove the mesa-dri-nouveau”, probably it needs only if you use kde, but ask here for be sure
14) once upgrade is finished remember point 11) boot to 15.0 and update everything
15)update all repositories to 15.0 and switch as you need to them
16)good luck and cross fingers lol!
17)if you have problems ask here that the guys are fantastic
ciao, pier
To ensure continuity of service, please read the Leap 15 release notes here and be prepared for some major packaging changes in 15.
I might point to the introduction of firewalld and maybe the deprecation of cryptconfig if you are using encrypted volumes, but something else might be of interest.
I’ve had excellent experiences doing online upgrades with zypper. I upgraded with zypper at least one installation from 42.1 directly to 15.0 without any trouble that I can remember. Online/zypper upgrades can be relatively pain free, so going from 42.1 to 42.2 first, then to 42.3, and then to 15.0 might be a good idea since you have so much depending on it.
A similar approach could be used for 12.2. The gwdg.de mirror maintains old releases from which you could step to 12.3, 13.1, 13.2, 42.1, etc. If 12.2 was an upgrade from 11.4 or 12.1, further upgrades might be a bad idea, as it might still be running on sysv instead of systemd, thus more likely to stumble on complications from an immature systemd.
Please don’t mistake SUSE 12.2 (possibly SLES 12.2? that is just EOL) with openSUSE 12.2 which is way too old; either way I would prefer a clean reinstall, unless somebody has solid proof to the contrary.
There should be a relatively smooth path from Leap 15 to SLES 15, but not the other way around AFAIK.
You might want to weigh the costs of doing a fresh install to troubleshooting issues that might be caused by multiple upgrades. I’ve always run into several small issues doing upgrades. None have been detrimental, but I think the time spent fixing them is probably equal to backing everything up and doing a clean install. If you do multiple upgrades, the last step in going from 42.3 to 15 will break samba, so if you use it, just be prepared. There is a workaround posted somewhere on these forums, but I just uninstalled and reinstalled it (which also uninstalls a very large number of dependencies, which also need to be reinstalled) and that seemed to fix the problem.
OK, thanks guys. Upon your responses I decided to make fresh installation on both servers. Additional question is if a backup of /etc will maintain all settings for samba, apache, mysql, etc. Do I have to use same usernames and passwords on both servers or is it OK to change them.
I do not know about samba (but I guess there is some documentation about samba? and you can look in /etc if there is something, don’t be shy to look into your system to learn from that)), but Apache configs are in /etc/apache2.
Remind that I said “for reference”. Do not simply copy the old config files over the new one. “Intelligent merging” is the expression I like to use here.
When there is a strong bond between systems, you should use the same user names for the same functions (either the same human people, or the the same roles) on those systems. E.g. IMHO it would not be a good idea to let your data base manager have different user names on different systems.
Specially when there is some software binding like NFS. Remind that in this case the user names are secondary because they are what the user normally sees (but for the human mind the same names for the same things might be very nice), but it is the user ids (UID) and group ids (GUID) that matter. Certainly in an NFS case.
And about passwords, that is the subject of your security policy. One thing I like to stress here: do not use the same password for root as for any normal user. That is a default action offered by the installer that is seen by many as not preferable (to say it polite).
I just booted TDE on 15.1alpha, freshly zypper upgraded from 42.2, with samba, but not apache2.
… and this is relevant to this thread how???
Extension of comment 5, which is no longer editable.