Need some advice about upgrading

[heinkel_111]

I wondered if someone would offer me some advice on how to upgrade.
I am currently on edgy. I have quite a few additional packages installed and I was hoping to minimize time spent on reinstalling those post upgrade.

I have downloaded and burned the DVD for Kubuntu Feisty.

I always do a quite comprehensive system backup before upgrading and I am working on that now, as well as planning the upgrade itself, but I am coming close to the final preparation stages, so I wonder:
Which options do I have for upgrading? And what would be the most effective for me?

1. Following the upgrade wizard (I admit I have not even dared to look yet, I am scared of wizards that perform system critical tasks). Some questions about the wizard:

• will it read the software off the net or can i make it upgrade from the DVD?
• does it keep all my selected "extra" packages from the edgy intall or will I manually have to re-select and install these after the "base intallation" is complete
• will i loose desktop customization settings

2. I guess it is an option to do as I did when upgrading from to Dapper and Edgy: Edit the sources.list to include feisty repositories and then issue a distro upgrade command. I don't recall the exact syntax at this time of writing but the general procedure should be known to users that have upgraded previously.

• I can make it upgrade from the DVD! (insert a line for the DVD in souces.list should do it, but how exactly is it done?
• does it keep all my selected "extra" packages from the edgy intall or will I manually have to re-select and install these after the "base intallation" is complete?
• will i loose desktop customization settings <--- yes, I have forgotten a few things

Is the feedback on the upgrade wizard generally good? Would you recommend the wizard or the manual upgrade?

or am i just totally wrong and manual upgrade is no longer possible
(kubuntu.org was not available, i could not look up upgrade documentation)

[heinkel_111]

Re: Need some advice about upgrading

eh ... this one is just bumped for attention
(Read the top post and reply, folks :P)

someone got to have some advice, if not all i am asking for!

[Rog131]

Re: Need some advice about upgrading

Well

Recommended ways to upgrade:

Upgrading to Ubuntu 7.04
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/upgrading

Installation/UpgradeFromOldVersion
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...FromOldVersion


Not recommended ways to upgrade:

Manual upgrades to Feisty
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FeistyUpgradesManual


Sporty way to upgrade:

HOWTO : Dapper to Feisty a.k.a. What Happens If I ...
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=13511.0

[heinkel_111]

Re: Need some advice about upgrading

Thank you!

This collection of assorted readings I have sifted through once, but it appears very likely I shall prefer the DVD method which is described.

[bturrie]

Re: Need some advice about upgrading

I'd strongly recommend using something like partimage (in command mode) to capture an image of your system to a usb drive before you start. That way if your upgrade fails you can at least get back to edgy relatively easily.

There are a couple of things to consider. One is that partimage can only copy from an unmounted disk and copy to a mounted disk. I used a Knoppix 5.01 (live) cd to do this. Knoppix will start with both your hard disk and your usbdisk unmounted. The only slightly tricky thing was write mounting and enabling my usb disk so that i could make the copy. To do that from knoppix, first from the desktop right click on your usb drive and mount it then right click on it again to write enable it.

[heinkel_111]

Re: Need some advice about upgrading

Partly because of the upgrade, but also partly because my disks were a mess in general, I have dedicated some time (and postponed the upgrade) to re-structure my disks and set up a more worked-through scheme for backup.

I don't see the need to backup / because all the information there should be possible to restore with only minor losses by re-installing the OS (for example, edgy). Also I now have a disk with media content which is mostly audio files I have copied from my CDs - again, I have the data source availalble, so backup is not a high priority.
I also have an archive of software I have downloaded off the net (stuff that is not in the kubuntu repositories) which is not important to back up, really - because it is still out there (or already obsolete version) and I can download it once more if really needed.

Before I started my home folder contained a lot of this information which was not unique and not personal. Now after this reorganisation, almost all the stuff in my home folder is unique, personal and, dare I say, mostly of high value to me - it is a first priority to backup those data. I am setting up a script to maintain three backups of these data in various partitions on various computers. Now if I only could get one off-site as well, it would be really good. Anyway, as you can see from this rant, things are shaping up and I think by the end of this day I will be getting ready for the upgrade, in my opinion.

But why did you recommend I backup my system (I interpret that as root partition)?

[Rog131]

Re: Need some advice about upgrading

And if you have room in the hard disk:

Topic: HOWTO: Copy kubuntu system
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=11116.0

[bturrie]

Re: Need some advice about upgrading

I've had more than one upgrade attempt leave me more or less stranded with no clear way forward or backward (I'm still fairly new to linux). On my failed upgrade from dapper to edgy I finally decided to wipe the disk and reinstall. Reloading my wine applications was a bit of a pain so this time I made a backup so I could go back and rethink my strategy--which I did when the upgrade dumped me out in console without a working X.

Second try I figured out how to get X working so I'm on feisty at this point. That said the advantages are not major. I like the upgraded basket application and feisty does seem a bit faster. I also like being more or less current.

[heinkel_111]

Re: Need some advice about upgrading

I ended up trying the manual way, maybe because I knew there was considerable crash potential :P

It ended just like you would have anticipated: First dist-upgrade stopped at apache2. This is a known bug. I fixed it with apt-get install -f and was able to proceed. Later it stopped at some 32-bit library I think may be related to the hacks I have done to get flash to show in 64 bit.

Final solution: reinstall from dvd. (re-formatting root partition and swap)

What I learned: I shoulda backed up /etc/ as I had tons of customized settings files there that I am spending some time putting back to original state now.