Update function in Linux Mint for updating to next version?

[teaumaz]

I was wondering whether the update functionality in Linux Mint will allow me to update to the next version (so no need to back-up everything, download ISO and re-install), or does it function more like Windows Update in that it only provides security updates to software?

[Husse]

mintUpdate will not upgrade to the next version.
A tool for that will be included in version 6 - I don't think it will be ready in time for Elyssa
As it is a LTS a fresh install could be useful - and if you have home on a separate partition, which is recommended, no extra backup is needed
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _partition

[det4100]

This is an interesting question. I have been happily using and learning the ins and outs of Mint and Linux in general, that I never thought of this. If my home directory is on a separate partition, then I can upgrade without losing my data. What about all the programs I added since installing Daryna? And their config files? What about my Samba settings, networked printers etc. Will I have to reinstall and reconfigure them? Set up Email accounts, news groups, Firefox plugins etc? I have separate partitions for boot, root, and usr/local. How will upgrading affect these partitions? Will I have to manually configure them again? A lot to think about I guess, before choosing to upgrade to a newer release.

det4100

[Husse]

If you have your mail profile in home that together with lots of settings are kept
I just reinstalled when Daryna came out and was immediately ready to go did not do anything about may mail and lots of other settings

[miket]

Hi Husse !

Could one not just alter the entries in the /etc/apt/sources.list file to point to the newer version of Mint and then
perform as root an apt-get update ; apt-get dist-upgrade ??

This is how I have been moving through the versions on my Debian Server systems for years without any problems at all

Mike.
http://www.avanceit.co.uk

If you have your mail profile in home that together with lots of settings are kept
I just reinstalled when Daryna came out and was immediately ready to go did not do anything about may mail and lots of other settings

[miket]

Hi sundayrefugee,

Thanks for the reply ... I'm really enjoying some of the discussion on this forum.

It's a shame Mint doesn't use the same approach as Debian to upgrades, especially as at the heart of Mint one will Debian

In a commercial environment not having a true upgrade path isn't good.
Having to reinstall not only the O/S but all the users applications on top of the O/S will entail higher upgrade costs which many clients won't be happy about.
On top of this there is the risk that the client data may get overwritten by the newly installed O/S, especially if the client hasn't kept all their data in their home directory,
which will require a backup and recover on top of the already elongated process.

Moving away from the upgrade functionality that is already present in the Debian system, in my mind, wasn't a good move and will surely come back to haunt Mint as it gets
established in the commercial market place.

The customers that I have already moved over to the Linux Mint platform are extremely impressed and pleased with it's performance, reliability (apart from a few wifi problems!!)
and the fact that they no longer have to spend a fortune on virus protection, internet security and office suite licences, however they aren't going to be happy when it comes to upgrade time !!

I think the upgrade process is something that will have to be addressed sooner rather than later if Mint is to succeed in the commercial environment and companies like
my own are going to put the time and effort into getting Linux Mint into what is already a very competitive market place.

Just my two penneth worth

EDIT: I forgot to mention that at present I am finding the competition to Linux Mint to be Apple OS X, many of my customers are looking to move away from
windows to a new platform, however OS X is going to win on the upgrade path no matter how hard I try to convince them that Linux Mint is a good move

Mike.
http://www.avanceit.co.uk

Ps: What are the rules on quoting ? Top or bottom ??

That should work in theory, but rarely (*almost* never) works in practice. Debian is *specifically* made to work exactly like that. It's called a "rolling release". Mint just isn't. In fact, most distros aren't. Some users come close, and get by by perpetually using whatever the "testing" repo is called (rawhide, cooker, devel, whathaveyou) but tend to have *much* more trouble than the average user.

Doing what you describe with Mint isn't any more likely to succeed than installing Mint, then RPM, apt-rpm, alien, changing sources.list to Fedora 9 and running dist-upgrade

[miket]

Hello again !

It's great to have an open and honest conversation like this, it's really refreshing, so don't worry about offending, it's all for the good of Linux Mint in the long run!

I've come from a corporate level sys-admin background, Sun/HPUX/AIX/Linux etc, so I fully understand and appreciate your comments and of course agree with you too!

After in excess of 25 years in the corporate game I found myself getting tired of it all and decided to have a go at the small to medium sized business market place.
I have been amazed at how much some small companies are paying for support and the actual level of support they have been getting, in some cases it's been terrible.

My aim is to bring what I know as the "Corporate" level of "IT Support" to the small business community but at small business prices, and I have to say it has been very well received too!

Anyways, all that was slightly off topic, for which I apologise!
So back on subject, I agree that the Mint/Debian relationship is indeed a strange one and I too have wondered why it is so ... would it not have been simpler to
build Mint directly off of a stable working Debian build ?

Anyways, that decision has been made many moons ago so lets not dwell on it ....

I agree that there are many benefits to be had from using a complete fresh reinstall process for upgrading, especially in the corporate world where the usage of
the systems is carefully managed with upgrade in mind, but no matter how hard I try to inform my clients that it's best to keep all their data in a particular
area of the system, they still go creating directories in places that make me cringe, I think it is a throwback from their windows days

Since Linux Mint is aimed at the Desktop rather than the backend server side of things I still think that is should support an upgrade process rather than
a complete reinstall process just like any other Desktop solution does today, OS X is a *NIX based system and it's upgrade process works extremely well,
wouldn't it be great if Linux Mint could boast the same functionality too ... it would certainly put it head and shoulders above some of the competition.

As for Macs, well I have to confess I am using one right now to type this ... I've been a mac fan for more years than I am going to admit to !
My 10 year old Clamshell iBook is still going great, and of course has been running Debian Linux for many years ... however all my servers are Debian based ...
(I wonder if "Servers" is an area Mint will eventually move into as well ?)

I've been tinkering with Linux ever since it was just a small O/S booted from a "Boot" and "Root" floppy disk based system ... ah those were the days

Right, time to go do some work

Mike.
http://www.avanceit.co.uk

LOL I think the quoting rules are whatever you want them to be

On Mint and Debian - it's a strange relationship. I'm not *entirely* clear myself. However, it traces through Ubuntu, which uses Debian in a strange way. Their solution to providing current packages vs. stable environment is to take a "snapshot" of Debian Testing+Unstable+Experimental every 6 months, and then *heavily* modify and bugfix it. So, by it's very nature, Ubuntu ceases to become a rolling release distro, even though it's mother meta is Debian.

To get around the problem of user upgrades by re-installs, (well, it's rather complicated, but here's a sort of simplified analogy), upon a new release, they release a meta-package that more-or-less deletes the old OS, preserves user settings, and installs the new one. It's not anywhere near as clean as it sounds, but it *usually* works, more or less.

Mint is based on Ubuntu. I read some accounts that it forked at around v.6.06.01, however I cannot find any signifigant skeletal differences between 4.0 and Gutsy, even using -lsb. The actual differences, outside of artwork, tools, and some refinement and bugfixing of Gutsy remain entirely unclear to me, but I must say that I run into almost *none* of the bugs in 4.0 that I can, to this day, easily reproduce in Gutsy.

To your statements on corporate and client distros, I must respectfully disagree. *The* top names in the business, Red Hat, SuSE, Sun, Oracle, etc.. *none* are rolling release - they are all "wipe-and-reinstall" distros, effectively. There aren't clean rolling upgrade paths for any of them. It's the industry norm. It may turn off individual users, or users already used to Debian, but any *nix-experienced IT manager will already be well-versed in the routine.

Mind you, I'm not necessarily saying it's *better*. In many cases, it is, but in many cases, it's not. I'm just saying it's the industry norm at this time

Edit to add: Oh, and I doubt you'll ever get Mac addicts off of their Macs, no matter what you try. If I had the sustainable income to own one properly, you likely couldn't pry it out of my cold, dead fingers either

[miket]

This is addictive

Oy, let me apologize. I'm used to explaining these things to newer users who aren't well-versed in the IT side of things. I didn't realize I was conversing with someone who could school me on the subject at their leisure You've obviously forgotten more than I'll ever know about that aspect of Linux

No apology necessary, I am still learning believe me!
Yes I've forgotten a lot, some of it deliberately forgotten ... but it doesn't make me any better than anyone else ... I've come across "Newbies" to linux who are doing
things I never knew were possible, that is the great thing about UNIX, it's infinitely complex and thus infinitely flexible, it all comes down to ones imagination!

I can remember buying my first Linux, a Caldera book with a floppy inside I'm thinking we're showing our age

Shhhh! They'll be starting an old timers section on the forum for us if you let that kind of info loose

In the meantime, if you scroll down a bit, you'll see a side project basing Mint on Debian, in which you'll see your's truly enter in later It was decided that support-wise it would be too much, at least at this time (and in any foreseeable future...), but a detailed public history of the discussion is available in the Debian CE thread
In the meantime, enjoy that Mac

I'll take a look, thanks for the pointer ... and yes, I am enjoying my Macs ... all of them

Mike.
http://www.avanceit.co.uk

[Husse]

This topic gets off topic
But that's ok
I'm a newbie in Linux - I actually started using it a few days after I joined this forum, but I've used computers - and Internet - heavily since 1996 (there were about 46000 internet users in Sweden at that time ) We all have our individual way to where we are, and I'm a quick learner even if I'm 60+ of age
(See about us about me)
The problem with basing Mint on Debian is that it is rolling so fast you don't know what to base it on - see the topic Sundayrefugee refers to
Included in version 6 of Mint will be a upgrade tool (would be great to have it in Elyssa, but there is not time to make that happen). It will (I think) be a .mint file so the software portal will be used
The user chooses upgrade like any other application...
The main edition forked off Ubuntu with Barbara, based on Edgy. The KDE edition is actually based on Gutsy Kubuntu - this is not helping support at times, but it helped it being done faster.
The reason it came long after the main edition was that all Mint apps were ported to it and that proved difficult

[teaumaz]

mintUpdate will not upgrade to the next version.
A tool for that will be included in version 6 - I don't think it will be ready in time for Elyssa
As it is a LTS a fresh install could be useful - and if you have home on a separate partition, which is recommended, no extra backup is needed
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _partition

I was thinking about my problem (not having /home on a separate partition) and was wondering if this could do the trick:

I leave things the way they are now and, upon the release of the next Mint, copy my entire home folder to my external hard drive. After I complete a fresh install, I just copy the /home folder on my external HDD over my /folder of the new install.

Would this work? And what about hidden files? How can I make sure I copy everything to my external HDD and back to the new installation?

[miket]

There's only one problem with this approach, if you don't also copy over all the .* directories you are at risk of loosing all your email and other such things like news-groups, mozilla favorites etc ...
(And if like me you use VirtualBox you will loose all your virtual machines!!)

If it were me I would use 'tar' to make a tar ball of the complete home dir and store that on another drive.
Just the thought of using FAT32 makes an old sys-admin cringe

As always, with unix there are many ways of doing the same thing !

Mike.
http://www.avanceit.co.uk

Well, a really easy, hassle-free solution would be to make sure the drive is formatted to fat32 to avoid permission issues.
Then, instead of just mass copying your entire /home folder over, just make some folders on the fat32 drive, such as documents, pictures, etc... Then just go into your home folders, click "select all", copy, and paste. Do this for each thing you'd like to save over. Don't save any .xxx settings unless you're *positive* you have something *just* how you want it and will want to overwrite Elyssa's default
Then, upon fresh installation, just reverse copy'n'paste your stuff back.
No programs to install and run, no permissions or uuid's to worry about. Not elegant, but it works without a hitch

[Husse]

Just remember to first delete the .xxxxx directories you *don't* want to carry over

Well I'd move them to the desktop (possibly rename them) just in case there is something in them I'd miss
This would be the ones with gnome in their name and gconf + gconfd I guess - this is the newbie section, remember

[miket]

Hi Husse !

this is the newbie section, remember

Yes, I must apologise, I tend to forget that not everyone will understand what a tar-ball is
It's a little "Old School" !
Ok, here are some simple instructions to complete the process :

Mount your external hard, if it's a USB device this is done by just plugging it in.
Open up a Terminal from the main Mint menu.

Now the fun bit, lets create the archive of your home directory and compress it on the fly, this is done using two applications, tar and compress.
If you haven't got compress installed on your system (I don't think it is part of the default install in mint), then just enter the following command to install it
before you start :

sudo apt-get install ncompress

Once this is done .... Change Directory into your Home Directory :

Type cd and hit enter/return

Next create the archive, type this command changing the External_Drive part for the name of your external hard drive ;

tar cvf - ./* | compress -c > /media/External_Drive/MyHomeDirectory.tar.Z

This will create a compressed archive of your home directory in the file named MyHomeDirectory.tar.Z on your external hard drive named External_Drive mounted under the /media directory.

To unarchive it you just need to use the reverse process, so again Change Directory into your home directory using the same cd command as above, then type the following in a terminal :

uncompress -c /media/External_Drive/MyHomeDirectory.tar.Z | tar xvf -

It's really that simple ...

You can of course unarchive the file into any other directory you choose if you don't want to just overwrite the new contents of your new home directory, just
use the 'cd' command to change directory into the appropriate directory and then issue the unarchive command above.

If you would like to know exactly what the commands are and how they are working just enter the following in a terminal :

For information on cd type; man cd
For information on tar type; man tar
For information on compress type; man compress
(Man is the built in Manual for all UNIX commands!)

I hope this makes sense !


Mike.
http://www.avanceit.co.uk

[Fred]

Mind if I throw an idea in the pot? ...... I didn't hear any nahs so I guess that means go ahead.

If you have the unused space, or can cobble together a partition or partitions large enough to hold all your data, you can do something like this:

Use a small /home partition, say 3 - 6 Gig. or no separate /home partition at all if you wish. Make several additional partitions to contain Music, Documents, Pictures, Downloads or whatever. Or make one larger partition, My_Data, let's say. Of course you need to move all the appropriate data into the appropriate partitions.

Create folders in your home directory reflecting the above names. Then mount those partitions in /etc/fstab as /home/username/Music .... /home/username/Pictures .... etc. In one of your data folders create a folder called ConfigBak. Copy all your hidden config files in your /home directory into ConfigBak.

When you install the new version use the same user name as the old install. Create your data folders in your /home again and go into fstab and change the mount points back to the newly created folders.

You can then copy back the config folders that you wanted to keep, to the /home directory from ConfigBak.

Viola... you are back in business. Now you have the extra security of having all your data on separate partitions. Even if your system completely self destructs your data is safely on its' own partitions.

There are all kinds of possibilities.... this is just one. Remember the basics. Linux doesn't see partitions or drives. It only sees the folders in the file system. The file system is everything. Once any folder in the system, including folders you create, is bound or mounted to a partition, Linux neither knows nor cares where the folder contents reside. It could be a different partition, a different drive, a different computer, out on the net, or wherever.

There are two requirements. You must have a folder in the system to mount to. You must have an entry in /etc/fstab with the correct path in order for it to mount automatically on boot.

You can mount the same partition to more than one folder, but you can't mount more than one partition to a given folder.

It's really not that hard once you get your head wrapped around the idea.

Fun ... huh!

Fred

[miket]

Yup, the man pages are all there ... I often use them on my systems which only give CLI interface, not everyone uses a GUI

Are the man commands actually functional in *buntu and variants?
@Husse - gotcha

[Fred]

AvanceIT,

Before I would go to all that trouble, I would just go ahead and write a shell script and automate the whole thing. Then it could be reused.

After all, we are already well over the thread starter's head anyway. Not throwing rocks at either you or the thread starter, but I don't think he would have posted the question he did, in the forum he did, if he was up to the exercise you have proposed. In fact, I would expect questions if he decides to do something like I suggested.

Don't take it personal. I can assure you I get carried away on a regular basis. lol

Enjoy Life, it is too short to do otherwise.

Fred

[miket]

Hello !

Fair point .... and yes the shell script would make it reusable, but I was keeping it simple

I think it is good to introduce newbies to the world of the CLI though

Mike.

AvanceIT,
Before I would go to all that trouble, I would just go ahead and write a shell script and automate the whole thing. Then it could be reused.
After all, we are already well over the thread starter's head anyway. Not throwing rocks at either you or the thread starter, but I don't think he would have posted the question he did, in the forum he did, if he was up to the exercise you have proposed. In fact, I would expect questions if he decides to do something like I suggested.
Don't take it personal. I can assure you I get carried away on a regular basis. lol
Enjoy Life, it is too short to do otherwise.

Fred

[Fred]

AvanceIT,

Believe it or not I agree with you. I just hope you can keep him with you. If you start him down this path be prepared to be patient and do a lot of hand holding to get him through. I guess that was my biggest point.

Fred

[miket]

Hi Fred !

Fortunately for me I've done a lot of training with "Newbies" in the UNIX world so I am more than happy to break it down into
newbie palletable chunks

From my experience, if someone is interested enough they will push themselves further ...
Time will tell

Mike.

AvanceIT,

Believe it or not I agree with you. I just hope you can keep him with you. If you start him down this path be prepared to be patient and do a lot of hand holding to get him through. I guess that was my biggest point.

Fred

[Fred]

sundayrefugee,

Yes, you are correct. I would indeed expect questions if he shows an interest in that path.

Your explanation of the file system gives me a headach, however. lol

Just to avoid confusion teaumaz, the explanation sundayrefugee gave for the file system above was slightly flawed. It was a joke.

There is some good information in this thread, but don't let it overwhelm you. One of us will help you through, whichever way you think might be best for you. There isn't a right or wrong way here. Just choices. There are many of them available to you in Linux.

Fred