[ubuntu-uk] Upgrade from 6.06LTS!

[Bruno Girin]

On 27/11/12 14:13, Paul Tansom wrote:
> I have a server (i.e. no desktop software, X, or etc. - not that this necessarily follows, but it does with me!)...
>
> ...anyway, this server is currently running Ubuntu 6.06LTS and I need to upgrade to 12.04LTS. Clearly I have two options, either upgrade or reinstall. Reinstall seems safer, bar the fact that there is some software that I would need to disect the configuration of to reinstate (a backup using BoxBackup to be precise); that points towards a step by step upgrade path (8.04, 10.04 and 12.04), but I'm somewhat nervous of the number of possible gotchas present in this. Has anyone done this and could comment? Did it go smoothly?!
>

The way I'd do this would be to back up your current server, including
all the BoxBackup configuration. Then install 12.04 fresh and restore
configuration from the backup.

Also bear in mind that most software will have changed versions between
6.06 and 12.04 so you may need to re-do configuration from scratch
anyway. So I'd say you need a plan:

  * List all the essential software on your server and their versions;
  * Document as much as possible about the configuration of all the
    software for which you explicitly changed the config (at least where
    the config files are);
  * Do a backup of everything on an external HDD or another machine;
  * Install from fresh;
  * Install all the additional packages you need;
  * Everything that you didn't need to configure last time round, leave
    alone, the config on the new version should work;
  * Everything that you needed to configure manually last time round,
    check version numbers on 12.04: if it's the same than 6.06, you
    should be able to restore config from your backup; if it's not the
    same, you will need to understand the differences before you use the
    old config;
  * Finally, 12.04 uses AppArmor, which 6.06 didn't use (or not to the
    same extent) so you may find that configurations that used to work
    in the past now fall foul of AppArmor, in which case you will have
    to tweak some policies: so every time you have an old config that
    used to work and is now failing due to user permissions, double
    check that it's not AppArmor being too restrictive rather than lose
    the will to live by trying umpteen variations with chmod and chown.
    This may be a good place to start:
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1008906

Good luck!

Bruno