Advice for upgrading from Slackware 13.37 to 14.0 and maybe to 14.1.

Arcosanti · 08-11-2014, 12:40 PM

Sometime soon, I'm hoping to upgrade from 13.37 to 14.0 at the least. I might or might not upgrade to 14.1. In addition to what the DVD upgrade instructions says to backup, is there anything else I should backup prior to upgrading? I do have some customizations scattered all over the system. Most of them are in the /etc directory. Some are not though like scripts to handle hibernation and suspend events. What kinds of problems should I expect after the upgrade? I use XFCE in 13.37 as my desktop. This is a Dell Latitude D400 laptop. I'm hoping that upgrading to at least 14.0 will fix a couple of problems that I have had under 13.37 such as Locale support not working and Wine not being able to use Mesa.

Didier Spaier · 08-11-2014, 01:00 PM

If you follow instructions you shouldn't encounter many problems, of course making one upgrade at a time. See an alternate method here:
http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:sla...:systemupgrade

Nevertheless I'd prefer to make a backup of all I need to keep on an external HDD and make a fresh installation of Slackware-14.1, then restore from the backup only stuff that I'm sure I want to keep.

That's less error prone and faster, in my humble opinion.

hitest · 08-11-2014, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier

Nevertheless I'd prefer to make a backup of all I need to keep on an external HDD and make a fresh installation of Slackware-14.1, then restore from the backup only stuff that I'm sure I want to keep.

That's my preferred upgrade path as well. Also, I don't format my /home partition so a lot of my preferences come over to the fresh install.

coldbeer · 08-12-2014, 10:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcosanti

What kinds of problems should I expect after the upgrade?

Some differences I found 13.37_64 --> 14.1_64 (your mileage may vary):

1) I no longer needed to configure /etc/X11/xorg.conf to get high res monitors to work. 14.1 works with no changes.
2) Java is not included in 14.0/14.1 due to changes in licensing.
3) ALSA: I do have a note that I needed to create a ".profile" file and put "sudo alsactl restore" inside. Didn't have this issue in 13.37. I can't confirm this from memory though - I use Fluxbox mostly so it might be because of that. ;-)
4) Apache is v2.4.6 in 14.1 from v2.2.17 in 13.37. Some changes: By default most LoadModule lines are commented out. Also "Require" replaces "Allow" and "Deny", etc.
5) 14.1 switches to MariaDB from MySQL. Just like they say: the commands are identical, except for the replacement for my.cnf - its different for MariaDB. I always need to increase the max_allowed_packet so here's what I did:

Code:

--------server.cnf-----------------------------------------------------------------
#
# These groups are read by MariaDB server.
# Use it for options that only the server (but not clients) should see
#
# See the examples of server my.cnf files in /usr/share/mysql/
#

# this is read by the standalone daemon and embedded servers
[server]

# this is only for the mysqld standalone daemon
[mysqld]

# this is only for embedded server
[embedded]

# This group is only read by MariaDB-5.5 servers.
# If you use the same .cnf file for MariaDB of different versions,
# use this group for options that older servers don't understand
[mysqld-5.5]

# These two groups are only read by MariaDB servers, not by MySQL.
# If you use the same .cnf file for MySQL and MariaDB,
# you can put MariaDB-only options here
[mariadb]

max_allowed_packet = 1G

[mariadb-5.5]

[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet = 64M

You'll need multilib for wine. AlienBob makes it easy. I don't run Wine, but I do run Crossover with
MS Office Pro 2007 installed (daughter needs it for school).

14.1 KDE version is much better in my opinion than the versions in 14.0 and 13.37.

I never upgrade. I always do a clean install then copy my files over.