Upgrade Full RAID B3 from squeeze towards jessie

[pompopom]

Everyone,

I'm starting this new thread in follow-up of the few questions I posted here

Briefly put:
I have a B3 with squeeze in full raid (so not only /home) which I like to see upgraded to jessie still in full raid.

Reason:
I use my B3 almost exclusively for hosting an Owncloud server. Todays client versions no longer officially support the server version currently running, which freaks out my 'most important user' as it shows up in big red line of text each time you synchronize. Todays server versions require more recent version of Debian. And last but not least: it's just good practice to upgrade now and then and be able to get (security) updates.

Things considered:
Since my B3 is in full RAID it's no longer a 'standard' device. To make the full raid work some fiddling had to be done in u-boot variables. See MouettE's wiki and here. That said, I have always been a bit anxious on upgrading (main reason why I'm still on squeeze).

Advantage:
Since my B3 is in full RAID I can disconnect the e-SATA, attempt/do the upgrade on the B3 with a broken diskarray. If something goes wrong: I shutdown, swap the disks from S1 and B3, startup, see if everything works as expected, shutdown again. Plug-in the S1 with the now messed up disk in it, startup, and have the RAID rebuilt. Should be easy peasy

The options:

if you already removed all the excito packages from your B3 I would recommend doing a manual upgrade of your B3 ( apt-get dist-upgrade ) that way you'll keep your data and configuration. I can help you with that and provide the steps

This seems the most straight-forward solution at first. Today however, I still have all the excito packages, but that shouldn't be an issue, I can still remove them. What bothers me more here is that, since I like to move onwards to Jessie, I need to upgrade twice. Squeeze => Wheezy => Jessie. Each extra step involving maybe extra risks to mess up. In the end I still have a B3 with some original excito residu leftovers. Not that I have something against excito, but I just like to have it clean

If you wish to format and use the new image, the best path would be to boot the rescue system (remove the image param in install.ini) ; format and mount your raid device, untar the image on it, mount and edit the /etc/fstab to reflect the new root location, unmount and restart the b3. It should work and at least you should keep your RAID configuration. Never tested though, I don't have RAID anymore at home.

I'm considering this approach. Afterwards I can install 'whatever' I want without having things running I don't need/use in the end. Owncloud still running today is version 5.something (read: old and outdated) So it would be better to re-install this also and along side MySQL. Like I said: clean.

On the other hand: option 1 would be a great test and learning curve to get things done whilst saving the most of the settings etc...

If anyone has some suggestions, information, knowledge to share: feel free.
I'll be updating this thread/editing this post just to create some kind of howto for others interested.

[Gordon]

Hi Koen,

I think there is a Wiki that explains how to convert your current OS into vanilla Squeeze. If you're going to do the upgrade path, I'd definitely follow that one first and remove all the Excito related packages, because their dependencies will without any doubt cause you trouble.

[pompopom]

Hi Koen,

I think there is a Wiki that explains how to convert your current OS into vanilla Squeeze. If you're going to do the upgrade path, I'd definitely follow that one first and remove all the Excito related packages, because their dependencies will without any doubt cause you trouble.

Hi Gordon,

Thx for the reply. I suppose you're aiming at this wiki page:
http://wiki.excito.com/w/index.php?titl ... stallation

I read upon this yesterday and it's actually what made me, at first, bend over towards the 2nd option and doing a complete re-install instead of the upgrade as it seemed somewhat fishy in my opinion.
Let me explain why. The Wiki states:

Code: Select all

aptitude purge squeezecenter mailutils guile-1.8-libs libmailutils2 dhcp3-client dhcp3-common bubba bubba-frontend bubba-backend excito-keyring postfix mysql-server mysql-server-5.1 mysql-common mdadm mnemo2-base turba2-base libmysqlclient16 libfribidi0 libgmp3c2 libgsasl7 libidn11 libntlm0 libpng12-0 libxapian15

Which basically removes packages to revert back to a "clean"-er Debian Squeeze. However some purged packages seem a bit risky in my case. For example the mdadm. Off course, when in doubt, I could easily leave it be. But how to know if any other package removal would chain the removal of another, dependent, package ruining the RAID, or worse bricking the B3. Like you said yourself, uninstalling the bubba-backend will also remove ssh access, so there might be other stuff linked important in my case.

Yes I know: I can try and see the outcome, if doesn't work I use my disaster plan and swap the disks, but I like to think things through beforehand and know, more ore less, what to expect

Although I know my way around Linux, I'm far from being an expert.

Quick EDIT: I'm not even sure that today, since support for squeeze has stopped, I can still re-install some basic packages, as the ssh and LVM, from the correct (read compatible with squeeze) repos. Maybe you have experience with such thing?

[Gordon]

Actually, the Excito OS does not use the official Squeeze repository, but a mirror hosted on update.excito.org (or was it .com?). Reinstalling packages if required should not be an issue.