How safe is the upgrade from 7.04 to 7.10?

[Mario Vukelic]

On Thu, 2008-03-13 at 06:20 +0000, Liam Proven wrote:
> The /home FS is in a partition of its own, naturally. 

It's still a good idea to make a backup. Even partition managers have
bugs, and users are known to make mistakes.

> /etc sounds like
> taking a chance with preserving iffy settings, no?

That's why I said "selectively untar back what you need" :)
                   ^^^^^^^^^^^

I just prefer to back up the whole thing because otherwise I am sure to
forget one file to back up which will haunt me later. If I back up
everything (and keep the tar file) then I can always pull out a file
when I realize I need it.

> >   If you have some time, you might want for 8.4 anyway,
> >  it's a little more than a month away if everything works out fine.
> 
> I have been considering that, I must admit... But aren't upgrades
> meant to be done one version at a time?

They are (except from LTS to LTS), but remember that I am arguing for a
reinstall.

> [Nod] I know. I regret doing it now but at the time it seemed like the
> easiest way.

And I can't blame you, it often was the easiest way. And you've gotta
hand it to them, what the authors lacked in knowledge about Debian
systems and about programming, they balanced with good marketing acumen.