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Anyone has tried to Upgrade all the way from Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 to Trusty 14.04?

(I know the best way would be to get my data off the server and fresh install the latest release, but this is not the question here)

My guess would be to use the old-releases to upgrade step by step

  • from 7.04 to 7.10
  • 7.10 to 8.04.3 LTS
  • 8.04.3 to 10.04
  • 10.04 to 12.04
  • 12.04 to 14.04

I read this wiki manual for upgrading old releases But it doesn't say anything about directly upgrading from for example 7.04 to 14.04. But it seems like there a faster way to achieve this than updating step by step, is there? (see: Can I skip over releases when upgrading?)

What kind of problems would occur, If I go through all those steps especially from 7.04 to 14.04?

(sure I am sure, that there could emerge unsolvable problems so the system will end up in an unrecoverable state, so this would be just a try if it works)

Community
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rubo77
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  • We did a 6.06 upgrade to 12.04 and gave up on it. It took too long to install and checking in between releases was a waste of time. In the end we re-installed 12.04 and copied our MySQL databases over. – Rinzwind Jul 25 '14 at 08:57
  • Nobody is going to be able to tell you what problems might occur. The list is too large. But what you are suggesting - 5 upgrades in sequence - is hypothetically no different to doing those 5 upgrades separately. The fact that you want to do them in the space of a few hours, rather than a few years, makes no difference to the outcome. – bain Jul 25 '14 at 09:19
  • @bain please update you comment to "related" This is not a duplicate, because I don't ask how to do it here. I ask if anyone has done it and what problems occurred in this case – rubo77 Jul 25 '14 at 09:36

1 Answers1

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I've done 8.10 through 9.04, 9.10, 10.04 to 12.04 in an afternoon.

The only "direct" upgrade (almost certainly the best and fastest route for you) is to get your data off the machine and clean install. It sounds nasty but honestly, it's probably going to be a better end result than anything else.

You can't skip normal upgrades because a package upgrade (especially when going from one release to another) is transformative. Scripts execute that update config files and move data around.

This works in a LTS setting because time and effort is spent working out what all those transformations are going to look like as one. That's just not a process that's sustainable for every little release.

Oli
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  • Out of curiosity, did anything important break? – muru Jul 25 '14 at 08:53
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    It was a stripped down Server install where I controlled most of the things that could break separately (through a Python virtualenv). I'm not sure it's representative of other upgrades. I can tell you it used a whole ton of bandwidth though. – Oli Jul 25 '14 at 08:55
  • I pdated my question: I know the best way would be to get my data off the server and fresh install the latest release, but this is not the question here. So the main question is, If I have to go through all steps, or if I can upgrade directly in one step – rubo77 Jul 25 '14 at 09:03
  • You can't do it one step (unless that step is reinstalling). – Oli Jul 25 '14 at 09:04
  • Ok, so maybe smaller steps? What about directly from 7.04 to 8.04? – rubo77 Jul 25 '14 at 09:04
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    You need all the releases up to the next LTS. After that you can hop LTS'es and skip the normal releases. – Rinzwind Jul 25 '14 at 09:08