[clue-tech] Upgrading

[Roy J. Tellason]

On Thursday 13 January 2005 04:31 pm, Jeff Schroeder wrote:
> Roy asked:
> > Got some CDs on the way,  and it's time to start thinking about it.
> > You guys have any thoughts on the matter?
>
> I'm sure methods of upgrading are as various as distros, so I don't
> pretend to think my way is the best way, but you asked... :)

The "method" suggested by Slackware (the last time I looked) was to use their 
removepkg utility to take everything away,  and then install the new libs 
first,  if I'm remembering right.  (We'll see if that changed when the new 
version gets here :-).

> I keep all of my user data in /home, on a separate partition from root, 
> /usr, /var, and whatever else.

I also have /home and /var on their own partitions.  However some of the stuff 
that I refer to is under /root.  (Yeah,  I do stuff as root sometimes...)

> Then, when I need to do an upgrade I actually re-format all partitions 
> *except* the /home one and possibly /var (to preserve log files).  That way 
> I'm sure I don't get residual effects from old packages, and at the same 
> time I'm preserving my data files.

That's probably not a bad approach,  and I know that at least one time I ended 
up sticking another drive in there and installing to that,  then mounting the 
old one and copying a bunch of stuff over.  The one machine where there's the 
most "stuff" will probably need that to be done anyway,  but I'm not so sure 
about doing it for all of them.

> Note that many files in /etc are useful to keep, too.

Yes.  The Slackware upgrade stuff recommends backing that up,  if nothing 
else.

> The password/shadow files are important, as are things like network
> interface definitions (if you're not using DHCP) or the hosts file.

Yes indeed.

> Other system configuration things vary depending on what your box is
> running.  Typically I copy the entire /etc directory temporarily
> into /home before an install (cp -a /etc /home) and then just compare
> the new post-install file with the pre-install one to make appropriate
> changes.

If I don't install a new drive that's probably what I'll end up doing.

> This may not be the best/most efficient way to go about it, but I find
> that it works well for me.  YMMV.

Always!		:-)