Hi noname,

Did you try running the 10.3 installer? At one point it asks if you
want to do an upgrade or a fresh installation. This is the first
thing you should try.

Also, if you have your 10.1 /home directory in a separate partition
from the root, I think that helps a lot.

yours,
Andy

noname wrote:
> After using suse 10.1 for almost 15 months now I like to start using
> 10.3. I believe this upgrade is not suported. (Strange, since 10.1 is
> still supported and widely used.)
> What is probably the best method to make a switch from 10.1 to 10.3
> without loosing any configurations, user data etc?
> Upgrading from 10.1 to 10.2 and then from 10.2 to 10.3 does not feel
> right to me.
> S.

Boot up from the 10.3 media.

Go on and choose the option to update.

When you go on, you can always reverse with "Back"

Choose the Expert tab.

Read all the questions and choose carefully.

After a while you can also choose "only update installed packages and
remove unsupported packages"

Some calculating here takes some time, wait.

At the time you'll see your old repositories, saying "disabled" you can
edit them. If you have, say, Packman, put the Packman 10.3 there and so
on. Find these URL's in advance.

There wil be dependency problems and proposals to solve. Evaluate the
proposals, take your time.

You may run into too many dependency problem's that you don't want to
solve manually, as I did on one machine.

In that case you can reverse all the way back and choose new install.

There, when partitioning, choose to keep old /home. That will keep your
settings and data. This requires to have /home on its own partition,
which is always the only good solution anyway.

If you don't have that, you need to prepare that first, before the
installation.

If you can't or won't do that, just make a new installation but this
time make a separate partition for /home.

I have always been happy with "the old" partitioning way:

/
/swap
/home


On my server I also have a separate /srv

That one I updated successfully from 10.0 to 10.3

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?...cs.com&probe=1

Vahis
--
"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important
stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it "
Linus Torvalds 1996.

Andy wrote:
> Hi noname,
>
> Did you try running the 10.3 installer? At one point it asks if you
> want to do an upgrade or a fresh installation. This is the first
> thing you should try.
>
> Also, if you have your 10.1 /home directory in a separate partition
> from the root, I think that helps a lot.
>

My main concern is an upgrade from 10.1 seems not supported. At least, I
can not find what is officialy support for an upgrade to 10.3. The risk
is I can walk into some nasty bugs. On the other hand, I upgraded from
10.0 to 10.1 and that was also not flawless. But I am more worried about
what to do if I do not use the normal upgrade from 10.1 to 10.3.
S.

Vahis, thank you for the detailed explaination of your upgrade from 10.0
to 10.3. It seems you did not notice any bugs due to that upgrade. That
would be great. I only wonder if you had a full install or selected
packaged. Also, did openSuSE 10.3 warn you the upgrade from 10.0 was not
supported in any way? If not, I think I will try an upgrade myself. If I
also don't see a warning it is time I ask the developers for this.
S.

On Oct 6, 3:11 pm, noname wrote:
> Andy wrote:
> > Hi noname,
>
> My main concern is an upgrade from 10.1 seems not supported. At least, I
> can not find what is officialy support for an upgrade to 10.3. The risk
> is I can walk into some nasty bugs. On the other hand, I upgraded from
> 10.0 to 10.1 and that was also not flawless. But I am more worried about
> what to do if I do not use the normal upgrade from 10.1 to 10.3.
> S.

Don't panic.
Back everything up and then try it. If the worst comes to the worst
then you will have to fall back to your backups.

I have upgraded SuSE installations for years (mostly privately), often
skipping levels. It works most of the time.
One of the worst failures I had was with the old, crappy, profile
manager. They replaced it from one level to the next with no adequate
migration path and I lost one profile completely.

Vahis wrote:
> You should quote some of the text you're referring to.
> That way others can see what your post is about
>
Oops, sorry.

> It seems you did not notice any bugs due to that upgrade.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by bugs here.
> Problems with updating? Yes.
>

Bugs like: something did not work after the upgrade due to the upgrade.

> I'm not sure what you mean by full install here.
> I hadn't installed everything for sure.
> But a lot of stuff, yes.

Okay. Just asked to check


>
>> Also, did openSuSE 10.3 warn you the upgrade from 10.0 was not
>> supported in any way?
>
> When you choose to update instead of new install it will give you a lot
> of dependency problems. If you have used external repos, then for sure a
> lot. But it can be done and the 10.3 new installer that lets you choose
> installation repos during install helps a lot with that.
>

But apperantly not a warning if one tries to make a non-suported
upgrade. Just searching for any clue by suse what is supported.


> I'm working on updating 10.2 desktop to 10.3 right now.
>
> I will tell something about here...

I think that will be great. Maybe it is worth adding to the opensuse.org
wiki.

S.

noname wrote:
> Vahis wrote:
>> You should quote some of the text you're referring to.
>> That way others can see what your post is about
>>
> Oops, sorry.
>
>> It seems you did not notice any bugs due to that upgrade.
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by bugs here.
>> Problems with updating? Yes.
>>
>
> Bugs like: something did not work after the upgrade due to the upgrade.

10.3 has not given any problems.
If you install it clean or manage to update a previous version to 10.3
does not make any difference; the result is the same.

>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by full install here.
>> I hadn't installed everything for sure.
>> But a lot of stuff, yes.
>
> Okay. Just asked to check
>
>
>>> Also, did openSuSE 10.3 warn you the upgrade from 10.0 was not
>>> supported in any way?
>> When you choose to update instead of new install it will give you a lot
>> of dependency problems. If you have used external repos, then for sure a
>> lot. But it can be done and the 10.3 new installer that lets you choose
>> installation repos during install helps a lot with that.
>>
>
> But apperantly not a warning if one tries to make a non-suported
> upgrade. Just searching for any clue by suse what is supported.

Warnings like: "Don't upgrade your system, it's not supported", no.

I have never heard of such warnings. Since openSUSE is a Linux distro,
its software packages can be changes to newer (or older) versions.

The functioning of a most pieces of software requires some
libraries/other pieces of software. These are called "dependencies".

Example: Smplayer or kmplayer obviously require mplayer since they are
frontends to mplayer. Mplayer again requires something else (a lot).

A package management system like YaST will know about these dependencies
because they are documented in the software packages.

If any of the dependencies are not met you will get a warning. You will
also see a list of reasons why this dependency is not met. You will even
get proposals how to fix them.

There was 2.3 GB of new software downloaded in my case so can imagine
the number of dependencies. A few were not met directly.
>
>
>> I'm working on updating 10.2 desktop to 10.3 right now.
>>
>> I will tell something about here...
>
> I think that will be great. Maybe it is worth adding to the opensuse.org
> wiki.

This thread covers all of it:

A completely clean installation with no external software can be updated
easily. There's not enough for a wiki in it.

An installation with external software can also be updated but:

1. There will be a lot of dependency problems.
2. Many of them can be solved during the process.
3. The rest can be solved afterwards.
4. The result is a complete 10.3.

Updating can be recommended as a learning experience or proof of concept.

It can also be the easiest way if you don't have a separate partition
/home and you want to keep your user settings and the data in it.

If this is the case, make a separate /home next time. It's crucial

If you just want openSUSE 10.3 make a clean install.

This was the wiki.

Vahis
--
"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important
stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it "
Linus Torvalds 1996.