[Cialug] SUSE 10.1 or Debian?

[carl-olsen at mchsi.com]

I have two machines, so I'm not worried about down time.  I'd like to keep working with SUSE because I have some experience with it and it seems to do everything I need to do.  It is working flawlessly and has been for a couple  years now.  However, being able to upgrade the OS without wiping the drive or doing a complete reinstall does sound like a major improvement.  I can understand having to reboot several times.  I just wiped the drive on my laptop and reinstalled Windows XP and I had to reboot several times to get all the patches installed.  After installing all of the patches, Office 2003, SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2003, and Visual Studio 2005, I probably rebooted at least 20 times.

-------------- Original message from "Daniel A. Ramaley" <daniel.ramaley at DRAKE.EDU>: -------------- 


> It is possible to upgrade Debian from one version to another. A couple 
> weeks ago i tried it just to see if it would work. The computer was set 
> up as a desktop system, so it had a lot more stuff on it than a server 
> would (and thus a lot more opportunity for the upgrade to go wrong). I 
> upgraded from the Sarge/Stable distribution to Etch/Testing. I 
> edited /etc/apt/sources.list and changed "stable" to testing". Then i 
> ran aptitude and told it to update. 
> 
> Normally when i install updates (such as security fixes and whatnot) i 
> only have to run aptitude once, and reboot if a kernel update was 
> included. For such a major change i think i had to run aptitude a total 
> of 5 times, each time telling it to update itself. And each time it 
> would download more stuff and upgrade different parts of the system. 
> >From what i've read online, when doing a distro upgrade like that it is 
> normal to have to run aptitude more than once. Anyway, once it was all 
> done and didn't find anything else to upgrade, the system still worked. 
> But it was running a new version of Debian. I was quite impressed. 
> 
> During the upgrade the system stayed up. I would imagine for a simpler 
> configuration, such as a web server, that the only downtime would be 
> when the machine was rebooted to load the new kernel, and when Apache 
> was restarted to load the new version of it. I run my servers and 
> desktop Linux machines on Debian Sarge, but after seeing how easy it is 
> to upgrade am thinking of moving the desktop machine to Etch. I'll keep 
> the servers on Sarge until shortly after Etch becomes stable. 
> 
> I don't know about upgrading SUSE. The closest distribution that i have 
> much familiarity with is Red Hat. With Red Hat it is possible to 
> upgrade without a reinstall (by telling up2date to look at the package 
> repository for the new version, and then running it several times), but 
> it is not supported, not recommended, and not guaranteed to work. The 
> official path to upgrading is to do a reinstall, either over the 
> existing installation or after wiping the drive. On Red Hat i usually 
> do the wipe/reinstall, with data backup and restore. It is a big 
> hassle, especially if the machine is one that cannot be down for very 
> long. 
> 
> On Saturday 08 July 2006 12:47, Carl Olsen wrote: 
> >I should add that I'm doing commercial web hosting on SUSE 9.3 now, so 
> >that's why I'm a little hesitant to go with a different distribution. 
> > I have to set everything up on a different machine first to make sure 
> > it is all running smoothly before I move everything. When I told my 
> > coworker I didn't like having to reinstall the OS every time I wanted 
> > to upgrade to a newer version, he said that Debian can be upgraded 
> > with a package without reinstalling the OS. That would be a big 
> > help. It just seems incredible to me that SUSE wouldn't have the 
> > same kind of thing. 
> > 
> >So, I guess my real question is whether the above statements are 
> > correct. Can I do version upgrades with Debian without reinstalling 
> > the OS? And, do I really have to reinstall the OS to do version 
> > upgrades with SUSE? 
> > 
> >May these rephrased questions will stop any suggestion that I'm trying 
> > to start a distro war. 
> > 
> >Carl Olsen 
> >http://www.carl-olsen.com/ 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
> Dan Ramaley Dial Center 118, Drake University 
> Network Programmer/Analyst 2407 Carpenter Ave 
> +1 515 271-4540 Des Moines IA 50311 USA 
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