[ubuntu-uk] Upgrade from 6.06LTS!

[Liam Proven]

On 27 November 2012 14:13, Paul Tansom <paul at aptanet.com> wrote:
> I have a server (i.e. no desktop software, X, or etc. - not that this necessarily follows, but it does with me!)...
>
> ...anyway, this server is currently running Ubuntu 6.06LTS and I need to upgrade to 12.04LTS. Clearly I have two options, either upgrade or reinstall. Reinstall seems safer, bar the fact that there is some software that I would need to disect the configuration of to reinstate (a backup using BoxBackup to be precise); that points towards a step by step upgrade path (8.04, 10.04 and 12.04), but I'm somewhat nervous of the number of possible gotchas present in this. Has anyone done this and could comment? Did it go smoothly?!

As "untouchableangel" said - with so many steps in between, a clean
install would be preferable.

If you have the means to do a full backup first, though, I'd also
agree - for now, go to 8.04 and then 10.04 and leave it at that for
now. It's still supported, 12.04 is fairly new, and you could put off
the 3rd upgrade until later.

Another option along the same lines: run one of the many free P2V
tools, get your 6.06 image running inside a VM, then do a test-run
upgrade in that "safe" environment.

P2V means "physical to virtual". VMware do a free one, I think, which
you could run under VMware Player, also free. I am not sure that
VirtualBox has a free one but it would probably import the VMware one
made with VMware's P2V tool.

Once you know exactly what you're doing and that it works in the VM,
then (after a full backup!) you could do the "real" machine.

Another thought:

What used to be called VMware ESXi & is now called vSphere Hypervisor
is free. Only restriction: max 32GB server RAM. That's still quite a
lot. Snag: you need vSphere to manage it; it's Windows-only.

After you've done your P2V conversion, you could bung that on the
physical box and run your VM directly on it.

I am assuming it's a physical server, [a] because of its age and [b]
because if it was already virtualised, a backup and test-upgrade would
be fairly trivial.

-- 
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