Topic: Newbie upgrading from SME 6.0.1-01 to SME 7.2

[cyclefiend2000]

I have taken over maintaining our server at work. The fellow who used to maintain it, and who set it all up, is no longer working for us. I am not really familiar with this operating system, and have been reading and searching info on this forum and the SME wiki page for a few days now. I want to make sure I have all the information I need before upgrading to the newest version.

I found this thread:
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=32381.0
and based on the information in it, I determined which packages are installed currently that were not part of the initial install.

I am currently trying to figure out what custom configurations are in place. I searched in the following directories:
/etc/e-smith/templates-custom
/etc/e-smith/templates-user
/etc/e-smith/templates-user-custom

only the ./templates-custom folder contained any files, and it only contains one. Is there somewhere else I should look?

I am planning to back up all the data to an external harddrive. Then follow the installation instructions contained here:
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:Administration_Manual:Chapter5

We currently have a mirror image server running. It backs up data continuously throughout the day using rsync. I want to keep this configuration, and found instructions on how to set up a backup server here:
http://wiki.contribs.org/Backup_server_config

I went into our server-manager and made prints of pages with any information I would need to set the upgraded server up just the same.

Is there anything else I need to take into consideration?

Thanks for any and all help.
-Bradley

[imcintyre]

I'm a newbie also. I did this but used new hardware and a bit of the old brute force method. SME 6 was on older P3 and file server only. Got a newish P4 for same duties. I think you'll find that for 7.2, P4 is recommended.

Advantage I saw was did not have to do everything in a weekend or overnight and always had old server on line. I installed new 7.1 (at that time), and then side by side set up users and ibays etc through server-manager. There might be a better way to do this but I'm a bit simple. Installed contribs I wanted and got it working properly. Copied information over and then one evening switched fixed ip addresses. Went pretty seamless and still had old server still on line just in case, but hidden away. A couple of months later unplug and put old server to sleep.

My $0.02 worth

[cyclefiend2000]

i am prettty sure our existing server is a p4. i will check monday when i get to the office to make sure. we definitely cannot afford to upgrade hardware at this time though.

[raem]

cyclefiend2000

The procedures you suggest sound OK.

There is no real need to backup & restore though.
You can upgrade your existing installation using the 7.2 CD.
Make sure you uninstall incompatible packges first and remove the custom template you found.

If you do go the backup & restore route, then make sure your procedure works by testing it first, rather than doing it for the first time on a production server.
Just grab any workstation and an old hard drive, the hardware doesn't matter for test purposes. sme 7.2 will run on a 333MHz machine with 256Mb RAM & a 4Gb HDD, although I wouldn't use that spec for a "busy" server.

[cyclefiend2000]

that is a good suggestion. i thought about using our backup server for "testing" purposes. we dont have any old workstations at the moment.