This seems a lot of hassle just to run a mail server. Why not use Debian?


Iain


On 23 Dec 2022 at 4:11 pm, Andy Smith via BitFolk Users <users@mailman.bitfolk.com> wrote:

Hi Philip,


On Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 10:08:50AM +0000, Philip Storry via BitFolk Users wrote:
> My VPS is on Ubuntu 18.04 and it's plainly time to upgrade. And as
> I have some time off between Christmas and New Year, I figured I
> should do it then.

Hopefully your VM is 64-bit. If it's 32-bit, Ubuntu stopped
supporting that before 20.04 so there wouldn't be an upgrade path
and you'd have to reinstall.

> I see that there's a few possible gotchas to do with PV/PVH mode
> and supported kernel compression methods... so I thought I'd ask
> if anyone's done an upgrade from 18.04 to 20.04, and what tips
> they have.

I've done it a few times for testing, but that would be on VMs with
basically no applications installed just the base OS, so I can't
talk about any tricky app configuration changes.

> I was thinking of starting the upgrade, then switching virtmode in
> the Xen shell before the first reboot. Will that work? Or does it
> need to be a clean VM boot rather than just a restart for it to
> work? Or is it better to try to get 18.04 working with PVH (using
> the HWE kernel) and then do the upgrade?

Due to the trickiness with the compression methods for 20.04
kernels, I think you will have an easier time switching to PVH
before you upgrade from 18.04. So I would indeed go ahead and
install the HWE kernel and check it boots in PVH move on 18.04, as
you can easily switch back to PV mode if it doesn't. Just don't
uninstall the older kernel until you're happy it works.

Once you;re in PVH mode running the HWE kernel you should be able
to do-release-upgrade without any complications.

> Any other gotchas that folks have encountered? The VPS just runs
> email (exim4/dovecot) and apache, I don't expect any issues with
> them, and I'm familiar enough with them that I can fix any
> oddities that do crop up. It's just the kernel/Xen changes that
> have me being cautious...

I would expect the apache and dovecot configurations to change quite
a bit between 18.04 and 20.04, so do watch out for that.

Cheers,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

_______________________________________________

BitFolk Users mailing list <users@mailman.bitfolk.com>
You're subscribed as <iain@hairydog.co.uk>
Unsubscribe: <https://mailman.bitfolk.com/mailman/postorius/lists/users.mailman.bitfolk.com/>
or send an email to <users-leave@mailman.bitfolk.com>