[opensuse-project] openSuse upgrade "not supported"-What does that mean?
Hello all, What exactly does this mean, "not supported?" (reference http://en.opensuse.org/Updating_SUSE_Linux ) Let me give some background on my question. I ran RH Linux from version 5.0 through 9.0 and upgraded in this sequence (I can include mkLinux here, but I didn't upgrade there): 5.0->5.2->6.0->6.2->7.2 (I reinstalled 9.0 because I had the Ximian Gnome disk on top of 7.2 and that did some weird stuff.) I had problems, one which lost my PPP Internet connection (a real fun one), one where my old printing system went away and I fought to print again to a "special" HP printer, etc. but generally everything ran. So besides the possibility of minor inconveniences such as what I saw with Red Hat, what exactly is so terrible about upgrading Suse to make it not recommended and not supported? If I do a full system backup prior, can't I just do a tar to restore my system back (as I did before when my HD crashed)? Are lawyers making you say this or something? Thanks, Henry. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Saturday 02 February 2008 12:31:43 pm Henry Lafleur wrote:
So besides the possibility of minor inconveniences such as what I saw with Red Hat, what exactly is so terrible about upgrading Suse to make it not recommended and not supported? If I do a full system backup prior, can't I just do a tar to restore my system back (as I did before when my HD crashed)? Are lawyers making you say this or something?
As someone who has done several version upgrades with openSUSE, I wouldn't recommend them for the faint-of-heart, but they're certainly not catastrophically difficult. The single biggest challenge is having to manually reconcile dependencies in Yast when updating the packages. This can be minimized to a certain extent by first ensuring that all third-party packages are removed from the system, particularly ones such as Guru or Packman that replace core components. The method I've always used in the past was to simply replace my sources in Yast to point to the new version of openSUSE, as well as the guru, packman repos etc., and then launch Yast -> System Update. There would still be dependencies to resolve, but if you're familiar with your system, it's manageable. I've also run into quirks from updating similar to the ones you ran into with RH, but again nothing insurmountable with even a bit of knowledge of openSUSE linux. At the end of the day, I simply find clean installs easier now. I keep my /home on a separate partition, and I backup my /etc directory to a temp directory in my home partition, in case I need to reference any specific system settings I had previously changed. I think the issue with supporting upgrades is that due to the wide variety of system configurations, there is the possibility for too many corner cases or scenarios that cannot possibly be accounted for, so providing support across the board isn't really viable. Anyways, just like compiling your own kernel, you can't expect the openSUSE team to support any issues you have with it, but it's certainly doable and there's nothing inherent in openSUSE that would prevent you from doing so. Just be prepared to roll up your sleeves if anything breaks. Just my 2c... Cheers, KV --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
On Sat, 2 Feb 2008, Henry Lafleur wrote:-
Hello all,
What exactly does this mean, "not supported?" (reference http://en.opensuse.org/Updating_SUSE_Linux )
Not supported, as in you won't get support from Novell if things break. That doesn't mean that it's not possible to do.
5.0->5.2->6.0->6.2->7.2 (I reinstalled 9.0 because I had the Ximian Gnome disk on top of 7.2 and that did some weird stuff.)
This sort of upgrade would be unsupported with openSUSE although, using the present and previous versions as an example, if you had 10.2 installed, upgrading to 10.3 is "supported". Going from 10.1 to 10.3, most likely will work, but will probably require some effort. If you go from 10.0 to 10.3, it will require even more effort[0], and starting 9.3 or earlier, would require a lot of effort[1].
So besides the possibility of minor inconveniences such as what I saw with Red Hat, what exactly is so terrible about upgrading Suse to make it not recommended and not supported?
Some people don't recommend it because they've have bad problems with it. Others, because it leaves behind a variety of no longer used files, clogging up places like /etc .
If I do a full system backup prior, can't I just do a tar to restore my system back (as I did before when my HD crashed)?
You could use the SUSE backup tool in YaST. As to what it backs up, I don't know. I've not had a really bad experience with an upgrade where I've needed to restore from backup.
Are lawyers making you say this or something?
I wouldn't think so. The page you refer to on en.opensuse.org is hosted on the openSUSE wiki, and virtually anyone could have created or edited it. BTW, this would probably been better on the main openSUSE mailing list rather than here. You'd get many more points of view there, and probably several detailed experiences as well. [0] Yes, I've done that upgrade, twice in fact. I even blogged about it here: <URL:http://www.davjam.org/lifetype/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=16&blogId=1> <URL:http://www.davjam.org/lifetype/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=20&blogId=1> [1] And that was really a lot of "fun" to do: <URL:http://www.davjam.org/lifetype/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=17&blogId=1> <URL:http://www.davjam.org/lifetype/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=18&blogId=1> <URL:http://www.davjam.org/lifetype/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=19&blogId=1> Regards, David Bolt -- Team Acorn: http://www.distributed.net/ OGR-P2 @ ~100Mnodes RC5-72 @ ~15Mkeys SUSE 10.1 32bit | openSUSE 10.2 32bit | openSUSE 10.3 32bit | openSUSE 11.0a1 SUSE 10.1 64bit | openSUSE 10.2 64bit | openSUSE 10.3 64bit RISC OS 3.6 | TOS 4.02 | openSUSE 10.3 PPC |RISC OS 3.11 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
Henry Lafleur wrote:
Hello all,
What exactly does this mean, "not supported?" (reference http://en.opensuse.org/Updating_SUSE_Linux )
Hehe. When you look at the early revisions of the page, you'll see that originally it was an article about updating from one *beta* version to another. Which is indeed not supported. After a series of edits, the warning got "improved" to the current state ("Updating from one version to another is unsupported"). As the article no longer applies to beta versions, I think the first sentence can just be removed. ... minutes later ... I changed it to: {{warning| Performing distribution upgrades in the running system is unsupported and may result in breakage. For a supported way requiring only one mini CD, see [[INSTALL%40Network]]. }} I hope this is more accurate. Michal --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org
participants (4)
-
David Bolt -
Henry Lafleur -
Kevin Valko -
Michal Marek