[PLUG] question on upgrading

Tom tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com
Thu Mar 30 07:31:34 UTC 2017


To be honest, I do not fully understand what is your partitioning
scheme and what do you mean by scrubbing /usr, /var, /lib, /bin, /etc
partitions.
Scrubbing, in my mind, means cleaning, keeping your old stuff, but
cleaning/removing temporary or unused files <-- I am afraid that that
old 13.2 binaries, libraries and many config files would not work in
new system such as current 42.2.
For the sake of my opinion below, I hope that you do not have following
partitions: /usr, /var, /lib, /bin, /etc - I would not recommend this
partition scheme, unless you have good reasons for it.
1. In principle, you can keep your existing partitions as long as your
needs did not change and you are willing to do the required manual
configuration.
2. I would recommend deleting existing installation by formatting
partitions outside your /home partition
3. Default, stable and in my opinion good partition scheme for 42.x is:
   /boot/efi  vfat   ~180MB
   swap       swap   ~2GB  unless you need more
   /          btrfs  ~25GB this is about 2x what it used to be with
ext4 due to the space needed for snapshots
                           Your needs might vary depending on DB, http,
virtual drive files
   /home      xfs     .... if you have existing /home partition with
data, by all means keep it
4. Note on /home: Delete all application and desktop environment data
from /home by removing all kde, gnome and config data. Not doing so
will cause issues in your desktop environment. I normally delete all
files and directories starting with '.' and anything I did not create
such as Documents, Downloads, Videos, Music, Email ..... meaning - keep
your data, but delete everything else.
5. Note on /: if you chose to use not default (btrfs) root '/ '
directory such as ext4, then, you will not need more than about 12GB
for normal desktop system.
6, Note on btrfs: After using btrfs for root partition for about 3
years, I quite like the automated snapshots and how it integrates with
the boot and restore process. The default setup isolates directories
such as /var, /srv, /boot/grub2, /usr, /opt into separate btrfs sub
-volumes which is great for things like DB files, virtual images, etc.
This is used to turn off snapshots and CoW for the appropriate sub
-volumes. The automatic snapshots have saved me from serious trouble or
reinstalling - when trouble comes, just boot older snapshot, delete the
new one, reboot and you are back to any past updates or a config state.

I think, because of the above, and due to the fact that you should have
backup before reinstalling, that it would be easier to start from an
empty disk and restore your data from backup after the fresh instal.
This can be done during install at Suggested Partitioning step by
choosing: Create Partition Setup --> Choose Hard Disk --> Use Entire
Hard Disk

It could make your life easier to note and replicate existing users
together with their UIDs. You can create them manually from your notes
or Import User Data from a Previous Install - Select all or desired
users to import. Please note that this will only import user names,
groups, UIDs and GIDs, not their actual data from /home.
As always, you can experiment and get more familiar with the
installation process using virtual machine. Your current openSuse 13.2
should run VirtualBox or KVM without any trouble.
You can get help with the install at the Linux clinic or feel free to
reach out to me any time.
Best luck, Tomas
On Wed, 2017-03-29 at 19:58 -0700, logical american wrote:
> To all:
> 
> I am going to have to soon upgrade from openSuse Linux v13.2 to the 
> newer Leap version. But what I don't know is whether to scrub my
> /usr, 
> /var, /lib, /bin, /etc and other system partitions and leave my /home
> partition alone and hope that the installer on the DVD will NOT
> insist 
> upon repartitioning the disk and set up a newer linux into the new 
> partitions, but will overlay into the already existing partitions.
> 
> The current partitions are pretty balanced as to the necessary sizes,
> including swap.
> 
> Or I can make a copy of the /home area, then clean the hard drive and
> install fresh, as openSuse prefers.
> 
> Is it better to do the 2nd, just copy your own IP, save it,  then 
> install fresh and then copy back all your data to /home?
> 
> Either method, I still have to reinstall my own local programs back
> into 
> /usr and /etc areas, including the HP printer CUPS program.
> 
> Randall
> 
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