[TriLUG] Debian Upgrade

[Ken MacKenzie via TriLUG]

+1 on upgrade in place.  The debian literature typically has warned against
it, or at least that you do your due diligence, but for the most part
upgrading debian in place is painless.

On a workstation install it is recommended to load a live disk first to
make sure you have all the drivers you need.  But this is debian and I
always need to go get the wifi driver anyway...

I use debian more on servers, VPS instances typically.  My usual plan in
that case is to clone my vm first to test an update in place before hitting
the production box direct.

On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 11:45 AM, Roger W. Broseus via TriLUG <
trilug at trilug.org> wrote:

> Regardless of what distro, I keep /home on a separate partition so that it
> is easier to segregate and protect. Of course backing up is always a good
> idea. Here's some things that I find to be useful.
>
> The odd ball files are certain "dot" and config files that will not be
> "customized" when re-installing. Using Ubuntu, I record the contents of
> such files .bashrc, where aliases are defined. If you use Thunderbird, save
> .Thunderbird/xxxxx.default so that your profile, email and address books
> are protected (xxxxx will be some random string that Thunderbird generates
> to provide security through obscurity). Others include config files for
> added applications, e.g., filezilla. In general, these files don't get
> overwritten but be safe. If a clean install is done, it saves a lot of time
> to save such files. One way of quickly checking this out is to look for
> creation dates that are different from those established during the older
> install process. And, during upgrades, some dot files may be overwritten,
> hence the value of saving older versions in a backup.
>
> FWIW: I once blew away an install by accidentally deleting a bunch of dot
> files. The system would run . . . sort of. I had to re-install to fix the
> problem. Of course, all of the info in the config dot files was lost, e.g.,
> desktop configuration, "panels" (menu bars), etc. That taught me to backup
> / keep copies of dot files.
>
> I generally re-install between major upgrades with Ubuntu to avoid the
> hassle of contending with overlooked inconsistencies between versions that
> are not dealt with by upgrading between major releases.
>
> --
> Roger W. Broseus - Linux User
>     Email: RogerB at bronord.com
>     Web Site: www.bronord.com
>     NEW Nov, 2017: Pics from trip to France, Switzerland and Vienna
>         www.bronord.com/pics/fsa
>
>
> On 11/30/2017 07:45 AM, Brian Grawburg via TriLUG wrote:
>
>> I'm ready to upgrade my system to Debian 9.2.1 and would like some
>> guidance.
>>
>> I know that simply installing over the existing system is a bad idea and
>> so I must wipe my HDD clean and start fresh. It's all my data that I hate
>> trying to figure out how to keep and restore. Although I do backup
>> important stuff there is lots of material I'd hate to loose but wouldn't
>> jump off of the building if I lost it. One thought is to put in a temporary
>> slave unit and transfer everything to it then move it back when I've got
>> the new OS installed.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Oh, I'm thinking of putting Debian 9.0 Cinnamon (32-bit) on a PC for a
>> non-Linux user here were I work instead of the full Debian 9. Good idea?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Brian Grawburg
>>
>> Wilson
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Sent from a PC running Debian 7, 64-bit Linux and LibreOffice. (No one
>> needs to use MS Office!)
>>
>>
> --
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