update or fresh install?

Billgatus of Borg · 11-28-2010, 02:59 PM

Hello all.

i'm about to attempt to update OpenSUSE 11.1 to 11.3. i've heard the horror stories concerning those who simply tried to update rather than do a fresh install, and was wondering what the consensus amongst OpenSuse users would be.

Which do you prefer, fresh install or upgrade?

Pitfalls of an upgrade?

Some tricks to keep from having to do a lot of work to replace personal files?

i'm looking more for opinions and experiences rather than technical help. i can read, and this (11.1) is the second SuSE installation on this computer. Colour me cautious, but i'd rather not do something that i'll regret later.

So, Opinions? Suggestions?

andrewthomas · 11-28-2010, 03:51 PM

If you have your /home on a separate partition, which I believe is the default in OpenSUSE, then a fresh install is probably going to be the fastest and most pain-free.

Billgatus of Borg · 11-28-2010, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewthomas

If you have your /home on a separate partition, which I believe is the default in OpenSUSE, then a fresh install is probably going to be the fastest and most pain-free.

Perhaps i spoke a bit prematurely about not being ignorant. My system does show /home in a different partition than /. You're saying that an installation will not cause /home to be overwritten and would still be usable on the new install? If so, that will save me a good deal of grief.

Thank you for the input Andrew.

TobiSGD · 11-28-2010, 04:35 PM

Be aware that there ever can be a failure during installs or upgrades, besides from hardware- or user errors. So you should always have a backup of your valuable/important data, not only, but especially, when doing such things like installations or upgrades.

Billgatus of Borg · 11-28-2010, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

Be aware that there ever can be a failure during installs or upgrades, besides from hardware- or user errors. So you should always have a backup of your valuable/important data, not only, but especially, when doing such things like installations or upgrades.

The ~/home directory is the only one that would be an issue. The whole file is approximately 12Gbyte at this point. While i have other user accounts on the computer, none of them have any 'must have' files, and it would be simple enough to rebuild the accounts if necessary.

Thank you.

salasi · 11-28-2010, 04:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Billgatus of Borg

i'm about to attempt to update OpenSUSE 11.1 to 11.3.

Which do you prefer, fresh install or upgrade?

Pitfalls of an upgrade?

Well, the most obvious one is that in your situation, its unsupported. AFAIK, the only thing that is supported is from one version to the next sequential version. You could go 11.1 to 11.2 and then to 11.3, but if 11.1 to 11.2 could be problematic, then doing that twice must be doubly so.

@TobiSGD

Quote:

...but especially, when doing such things like installations or upgrades.

Yes, but if you take as a rule of thumb rule that, in reality, you ought to have at least one more copy than it looks as if you need, that would be two back ups for a new install which overwrites /home and one for an new install which doesn't.