Ubuntu 9.04 update to something newer

[Kent Borg]

On 09/05/2013 08:55 AM, sandman42 at libero.it wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> in a VM I have an ubuntu 9.04 (not accessible from internet), and I've been
> trying to update it in order to install newer releases of the programs I use on
> it.

Updates are tricky. The idea is that who knows what unknown stuff you 
have done to some old version can be automatically applied to a newer 
version. Like magic. This is hard to engineer, and very hard and 
cumbersome to test.

I think of a successful update as being a bonus.  The cases where an 
update works (the easy ones) are where it isn't very useful. The cases 
where you really want it to work (the hard ones) are where it likely won't.

I mostly never try.

> What could I do, except reinstalling everything from scratch???

Yes.

I do suggest a couple things:

  - The first is a little tricky technical matter: Do a custom 
partitioning and put /home in its own partition, then when you want to 
install a new version, install without touching your /home partition, 
and later add a line to /etc/fstab to mount it. (Note, some programs, 
such as Thunderbird, don't do well using a config data from an old 
version--this is an example of why updates are hard.)

  - The second is a little discipline: On every new installation, create 
a file in your home directory (I call it adminlog.txt). Every time you 
make some administrative change add a dated note saying what you did.  
(Mostly this will be the programs you install.)  Now, after you want to 
install a new version of Ubuntu, you can refer to your notes to help you 
get things the way you want them again.

-kb