[TriLUG] Upgrade Debian 7 to 8

[Ken MacKenzie via TriLUG]

I always put /home on its own partition.  It has saved me distro hopping
upgrades over the years.  Although a tip.  It is useful to put the contents
of your ~/.config in a different location.  Then after everything is
installed handle what needs to be handled.  Especially with different
versions of some desktop environments between releases I find using the old
configuration files sometimes leads to more headaches than restarting your
layout based on the new version.

On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 4:29 PM, Scott Chilcote via TriLUG <trilug at trilug.org
> wrote:

> 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
>
> --
> This message was sent to: Ken M. <ken at mack-z.com>
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>