Topic: Upgrade from 8 to 9 advice

[gbentley]

Hi all,

I intend to go into the office tomorrow to upgrade from 8.x to 9.1

I have the install CD, two new WD Red's and an external USB 500GB 2.5" drive

I have a couple of contribs installed and our own digital cert as well as 10GB of emails.

If I use the backup feature of the admin console and subsequent restore following installation of 9.1 is there much I will need to do following successful restore - or anything I should be aware of thats not in the upgrade section?

Thanks

[janet]

gventley

1) After the restore you will need to reinstall the contribs, so make sure there are versions available that are compatible with sme9.x

2) You might like to do a test run upgrade first to discover if there are any unusual issues. Then you can work out the fix for those & when ready perform the real/final upgrade from sme 8 to sme9.

3) Have a plan to revert to old system if something goes wrong.

4) Backup & restore can each take a long time (many hours depending on your amount of data).

5) Make sure you remove all sme8 repos & add in extra reqd repos for sme9

[gbentley]

1) Actually, think I only have 'Vacation' contrib - will check it out.

3) Have two new discs. Can go back to the 8.x install easily.

5) Pointers on this would be appreciated

[janet]

gbentley

It sounds like you have a fairly standard system with no local customisations or specialised add on contribs or other software.
In that case the upgrade, via backup install new OS & restore, should be smooth enough.

There is a Vacation contrib for sme9
See http://distro.ibiblio.org/smeserver/releases/9/smecontribs/i386/RPMS/

Before you start the backup, disconnect your Internet connection, that way the backup will contain email as at a certain date & time.
Then do your disk swap, install OS, restore from backup.
Check generally that the new system appears to function OK & has upgraded appropriately, send a few local emails to users, then when all appears well, you can reconnect the Internet connection.
Mail not yet received will be downloaded onto the new system.
Then you can run any system updates that are available.

One of the benefits of sme9 is support for software versions, but only on 64bit systems, so you will get best benefit (if needed) from using a 64 bit system. You might consider upgrading the hardware to 64bit if not already, & on that note use the correct install CD/DVD for your architecture & bus.

[gbentley]

Thanks for that. Backup took about 2 hours. Discs replaced. 64Bit install & restore took about 45 mins tops.

Then about 400 updates @ 315MB just installing. All seems good so far!