does fresh upgrade preserve system settings?

[braingateway]

I would like to upgrade my system release from LTS to LTS.
in http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2, clem recommends the fresh upgrade.

However, I have lots of system preference tuning, such as ssh, grub2, java alternatives, BLAS alternatives, lots of 3rd party fonts, many 32bit libraries ...

I look into the backupped package.list, I cannot find those info at all. Is there anyone has experience of using fresh upgrade? Does the fresh upgrade preserve those system settings? Or I have to re-do all the configurations?

If not, I would like to do the ubuntu-like release-upgrade. However, I cannot find the referred link any more:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/62

[Cosmo.]

At first we need to know: Which is your current version? Which is the version you want to install? And please tell us also the desktop environment (aka edition): Cinnamon,, Mate, KDE, XFCE?

[braingateway]

At first we need to know: Which is your current version? Which is the version you want to install? And please tell us also the desktop environment (aka edition): Cinnamon,, Mate, KDE, XFCE?

Mint13KDE to Mint17.1KDE

[Cosmo.]

The step from LM 13 to LM 17.x is a rather big step. This means, that regarding your system and system settings you have no reliable alternative than reinstalling. What you have at now as additional software may or may not work on LM 17. The only way to find it out is to install LM 17.1 as a secondary system (or in a virtual machine) if you have enough room on your hard drive.

You can try this tutorial to preserve your user's settings (stored inside your home), but also in this case i cannot tell you, if this works with such a big step.

In any case: Whatever you do, do a backup of your home and / or make an image backup of your system.
For a normal backup I suggest to use the filemanager instead of the mintBackup tool.

[braingateway]

The step from LM 13 to LM 17.x is a rather big step. This means, that regarding your system and system settings you have no reliable alternative than reinstalling. What you have at now as additional software may or may not work on LM 17. The only way to find it out is to install LM 17.1 as a secondary system (or in a virtual machine) if you have enough room on your hard drive.

You can try this tutorial to preserve your user's settings (stored inside your home), but also in this case i cannot tell you, if this works with such a big step.

In any case: Whatever you do, do a backup of your home and / or make an image backup of your system.
For a normal backup I suggest to use the filemanager instead of the mintBackup tool.

I appreciate your kindness. Of course, backup is always the first thing to do.

Normally the settings in ~/ never change in almost all distros. What I would like to preserve is the system configuration in /etc at so on.

So far the backup tool seems only generate the package.list. Is there anyone can explain how the backup tool works? Will the fresh-upgrade clear the entire system disk and just re-install all pckages in pckage.list? If it works as this, then the fresh upgrade is not useful for me. Is there anyone can revive the tutorial of ubuntu-style release upgrade?

LTS to LTS upgrade is rather common in ubuntu/kubuntu.

[MtnDewManiac]

Even if you succeed (not by any means a certainty), if/when you have issues in the future, how will you know that they weren't caused by this non-recommended upgrade path?

I have had the best luck - and the least stress - by copying everything I want to preserve, and spending an evening writing (in a file, on a safe partition/device) down every customization that I made. Can I guarantee that I haven't forgotten everything? No - but if, after doing what I can remember, it's not obvious in the new setup, it's probably not really important, lol. Important things tend to be apparent in their absence. And a guarantee that I don't have something left over from the previous OS version that might cause problems due to incompatibilities (some things DO change) and that I don't have an older version of something because the system didn't upgrade it, well... That's worth an evening to me.

Not to mention that it wouldn't be unheard of for a person to discover new features/options when they start redoing their customization, and for them to like the new choices better than the ones that they made previously. Look at it as a better chance to explore your new OS .

Or live dangerously, lol. You can do a clean install when - err, I mean if - your somewhat drastic "in-place" upgrade causes issues.

In any event, good luck and be sure to report back.

Regards,
MDM

[Pierre]

do you have a separate /home partition - or not?.

if so - use the installer to erase the / root partition, whilst preserving /home < NOFormat >
- otherwise, you will have to perform a clean installation - after you BackUp - that is . ..

[braingateway]

do you have a separate /home partition - or not?.

if so - use the installer to erase the / root partition, whilst preserving /home < NOFormat >
- otherwise, you will have to perform a clean installation - after you BackUp - that is . ..

Thanks for the suggestion. I do have separated home. But preserve home is not my question. My question is "Does `fresh update` clean everything in `/` or preserve system configs?" To me it seems it will do a clean installation and install all packages in package.list. But all previous customized settings will disappear (as the tutorial described: the PPAs will disappear).

If the `fresh upgrade` does this, that means it is just a fresh install not a upgrade. I have my own software installation script, which may do exactly the same thing as the `restore software selections`. Then I will not use the `fresh upgrade` and prefer the ubuntu-style release-upgrade. But I cannot find the ubuntu-style release-upgrade tutorials. If there is no such option I probably just do a fresh install of kubuntu, I can use exactly same /home, since most settings in /home are just related to DE.

Thanks!

[braingateway]

Even if you succeed (not by any means a certainty), if/when you have issues in the future, how will you know that they weren't caused by this non-recommended upgrade path?

I have had the best luck - and the least stress - by copying everything I want to preserve, and spending an evening writing (in a file, on a safe partition/device) down every customization that I made. Can I guarantee that I haven't forgotten everything? No - but if, after doing what I can remember, it's not obvious in the new setup, it's probably not really important, lol. Important things tend to be apparent in their absence. And a guarantee that I don't have something left over from the previous OS version that might cause problems due to incompatibilities (some things DO change) and that I don't have an older version of something because the system didn't upgrade it, well... That's worth an evening to me.

Not to mention that it wouldn't be unheard of for a person to discover new features/options when they start redoing their customization, and for them to like the new choices better than the ones that they made previously. Look at it as a better chance to explore your new OS .

Or live dangerously, lol. You can do a clean install when - err, I mean if - your somewhat drastic "in-place" upgrade causes issues.

In any event, good luck and be sure to report back.

Regards,
MDM

Thanks, MDM! It is a kind of production environment. I prefer to keep my previous setting as much as possible. The only things I need are newer kernel, newer libs. So I'd rather not to explore so much.

[MtnDewManiac]

It is a kind of production environment.

Well, that's the thing of it: If it's your experimental, distro-surfing, play with it until it breaks and then format and try again partition... then it's no big deal. But if it's your work setup, your sole OS, and/or a production environment, yeah? Why take any chances with that?

Regards,
MDM

[braingateway]

Well, I did a simple test in VM. The `fresh upgrade` seems do not preserve any system settings. Things as :i386 packages are not installed. So finally, in real PC, I just remove texlive and video driver, then change all ubuntu repos manually to trusty, mint repo to rebecca. After performing a dist-upgrade, I use `apt-get -f install` to fix errors. Luckily, only 3 config files need manually merged with maintainer version. Install some missing packages like mintsources. After reboot, the system just works without any error. Then I just reinstall texlive and video driver. All looks fine.