[TriLUG] Upgrade Debian 7 to 8

[Scott Chilcote via TriLUG]

After hundreds of hours lost banging on failed upgrades over the years,
my #1 best practice is to always put /home on a dedicated partition.  Do
a custom install and leave that partition exactly as it is (no format). 
Format all of the others (unless you multi-boot, but then you don't need
this advice) and fresh install.  I haven't had a problem doing this,
even when I got sloppy and skipped backing up /home...  Which I'm not
advising anyone to consider.

In my experience, the upgrade process only works smoothly under clean
room conditions, such as 1) you haven't side-loaded any applications via
the package manager, 2) you haven't had any failed app installs that you
had to unsnarl by hand, and 3) you didn't install any odd developer bits
of software that overlap the upgrade processes to-do list... There's
probably more.

This approach won't keep you entirely out of trouble, but it will avoid
that very un-fun situation that occurs when you upgrade runs off the
rails 9/10ths of the way through and says "Your system is in unstable
condition, try running some of these package manager commands to clean
up."  At which point, the very last thing you want to do is reboot
before the holes have all been plugged.

Hopefully, not too ranty...

  Scott C.


On 09/08/2016 03:56 PM, Ken MacKenzie via TriLUG wrote:
> Most argue it is safer to take a backup and go with a fresh install.  For a
> server especially I agree with that.  Desktop/workstations, I have edited
> apt sources and done an upgrade in place plenty of times without much to
> deal with.  However either way make sure you try a live CD first to make
> sure there is no hardware issue that might be an issue for your specific
> computer.
>
> Ken
>
> On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 3:49 PM, Grawburg via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org>
> wrote:
>
>> I understand I can, with care, upgrade my Debian 7 to 8 (Jessie) without a
>> totally new install. My question is simple: Am I asking for trouble doing
>> it this way instead of doing a fresh install on a new HD?
>>
>> Brian Grawburg
>> Wilson
>>
>> --
>> [This was sent from a PC running Debian 7, 64-bit Linux. No Microsoft
>> products were used.]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> This message was sent to: Ken M. <ken at mack-z.com>
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-- 
Scott Chilcote
scottchilcote at ncrrbiz.com
Cary, NC USA