24 Jan
2011
24 Jan
'11
1:11 p.m.
Hi,
Now that Squeeze is around the corner, I was wondering if there are any
special steps I need to take while dist-upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze
since I am running on Xen.
Any experiences/ suggestions welcome!
Thanks,
Rakhesh
24 Jan
24 Jan
2:14 p.m.
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:11:28 +0400
"Rakhesh Sasidharan" <bitfolk(a)rakhesh.com> wrote:
Hi,
Now that Squeeze is around the corner, I was wondering if there are
any special steps I need to take while dist-upgrade from Lenny to
Squeeze since I am running on Xen.
Any experiences/ suggestions welcome!
It should be as simple as editing /etc/apt/sources.list changing
any lenny entries to squeeze, then doing a (sudo) update followed by a
(sudo) dist-upgrade.
I am going to do the upgrade on my local (geneweb) database server
first and I going to wait until squeeze has actually been released,
rather than trying to do it now.
It might be worth checking for any online upgrade tips, for example
http://www.go2linux.org/how-to-upgrade-from-debian-lenny-to-squeeze
suggests doing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt dpkg apt-get
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
note his warnings about backing up your data/config info
http://www.debian-administration.org/users/e5z8652/weblog/22
suggest doing
aptitude update
aptitude install linux-image-2.6-686 (use version to suit your
architecture)
***reboot***
aptitude full-upgrade to avoid any udev problems
I think upgrading the kernel before the full-upgrade is going to be
important
--
John Lewis
Debian & the GeneWeb genealogical data server
2:27 p.m.
Hello,
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 02:14:46PM +0000, john lewis wrote:
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:11:28 +0400
"Rakhesh Sasidharan" <bitfolk(a)rakhesh.com> wrote:
On the whole, yes, follow the documented upgrade procedure. But..
Now that Squeeze is around the corner, I was
wondering if there are
any special steps I need to take while dist-upgrade from Lenny to
Squeeze since I am running on Xen.
Any experiences/ suggestions welcome!
It should be as simple as editing /etc/apt/sources.list changing
any lenny entries to squeeze, then doing a (sudo) update followed by a
(sudo) dist-upgrade. aptitude install linux-image-2.6-686 (use version to
suit your
architecture)
Make sure it's a -bigmem (PAE) kernel or it won't work under Xen.
Before you shutdown and boot into the new kernel you'll want to make
sure that you're still using grub legacy (not grub 2.x). That's
"grub-legacy" package on squeeze. Your grub kopt should look
something like:
# kopt=root=UUID=4bed9b7f-b2af-4bee-9750-9a6d8b12b590 ro console=hvc0
(i.e. get rid of the clocksource=jiffies that you may have had under
lenny)
The kernel you'll want is linux-image-686-bigmem.
Make sure that your /boot/grub/menu.lst is actually going to boot
into the right kernel, You may need to run update-grub.
Consider asking support for a snapshot first..
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
3:22 p.m.
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 02:27:17PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
Hello,
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 02:14:46PM +0000, john lewis wrote:
You should read the release notes (a work in progress since there is no
release). You can see them here:
http://www.debian.org/releases/squeeze/releasenotes
And probably report any issue you consider appropriate
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:11:28 +0400
"Rakhesh Sasidharan" <bitfolk(a)rakhesh.com> wrote:
On the whole, yes, follow the documented upgrade procedure. But.. Now that Squeeze is around the corner, I was
wondering if there are
any special steps I need to take while dist-upgrade from Lenny to
Squeeze since I am running on Xen.
Any experiences/ suggestions welcome!
It should be as simple as editing /etc/apt/sources.list changing
any lenny entries to squeeze, then doing a (sudo) update followed by a
(sudo) dist-upgrade.
25 Jan
25 Jan
5:15 a.m.
Hi,
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:27 +0000, "Andy Smith" <andy(a)bitfolk.com> wrote:
Before you shutdown and boot into the new kernel
you'll want to make
sure that you're still using grub legacy (not grub 2.x). That's
"grub-legacy" package on squeeze. Your grub kopt should look
something like:
# kopt=root=UUID=4bed9b7f-b2af-4bee-9750-9a6d8b12b590 ro console=hvc0
(i.e. get rid of the clocksource=jiffies that you may have had under
lenny)
The kernel you'll want is linux-image-686-bigmem.
Make sure that your /boot/grub/menu.lst is actually going to boot
into the right kernel, You may need to run update-grub.
Consider asking support for a snapshot first..
Thanks for that. And also for mentioning the snapshot option, had
forgotten about that.
Cheers,
Rakhesh
6 Feb
6 Feb
3:01 p.m.
Hi all,
On 24/01/2011 14:27, Andy Smith wrote:
Before you shutdown and boot into the new kernel
you'll want to make
sure that you're still using grub legacy (not grub 2.x). That's
"grub-legacy" package on squeeze. Your grub kopt should look
something like:
# kopt=root=UUID=4bed9b7f-b2af-4bee-9750-9a6d8b12b590 ro console=hvc0
(i.e. get rid of the clocksource=jiffies that you may have had under
lenny)
The kernel you'll want is linux-image-686-bigmem.
Make sure that your /boot/grub/menu.lst is actually going to boot
into the right kernel, You may need to run update-grub.
One issue I ran into (will only affect older VPSes I believe) was:
# update-grub
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
warning: grub-probe can't find drive for /dev/xvda1.
grub-probe: error: Cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/xvda1. Check your
device.map.
the solution to which was posted by Andy here:
http://lists.bitfolk.com/lurker/message/20080529.142153.954fedf4.el.html
namely:
sudo sh -c "echo '(hd0) /dev/xvda' > /boot/grub/device.map && cd
/dev &&
mknod xvda b 202 0"
which did initially sort things out, but since the reboot after
installing the kernel and upgrading udev that no longer seems to fix
things - any suggestions would be great!
Thanks
Joseph
4:28 p.m.
On 06/02/2011 15:01, Joseph Heenan wrote:
One issue I ran into (will only affect older VPSes I
believe) was:
# update-grub
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
warning: grub-probe can't find drive for /dev/xvda1.
grub-probe: error: Cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/xvda1. Check
your device.map.
the solution to which was posted by Andy here:
http://lists.bitfolk.com/lurker/message/20080529.142153.954fedf4.el.html
namely:
sudo sh -c "echo '(hd0) /dev/xvda' > /boot/grub/device.map && cd
/dev
&& mknod xvda b 202 0"
which did initially sort things out, but since the reboot after
installing the kernel and upgrading udev that no longer seems to fix
things - any suggestions would be great!
I've not found a solution for this
yet, but running
strace -- grub-probe -vvvv --device-map=/boot/grub/device.map -t device
/ 2>&1 | less
and browsing the output I noticed this line, which I presume is the issue:
open("/dev/xvda", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENXIO (No such device or
address)
I presume the older version of grub-probe was less fussy.
Joseph
10:53 p.m.
Hi Joseph,
On Sun, Feb 06, 2011 at 04:28:18PM +0000, Joseph Heenan wrote:
I've not found a solution for this yet, but
running
strace -- grub-probe -vvvv --device-map=/boot/grub/device.map -t device /
2>&1 | less
and browsing the output I noticed this line, which I presume is the issue:
open("/dev/xvda", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENXIO (No such device or
address)
I presume the older version of grub-probe was less fussy.
I think you could temporarily resolve it by also creating a device
node for /dev/xvda that looks like this:
rw-rw---- 1 root disk 202, 0 2010-06-18 17:24 /dev/xvda
We can permanently resolve it by changing your block device to be
xvda instead of xvda1. Actually as previously discussed the new
BitFolk standard layout is a partitioned xvda, but that will be a
bit of work.
Changing your block device name is just a matter of us
editing your config file then you shut down and boot again. Your VPS
comes up with / on xvda instead of xvda1 and it all still works as
long as you're booting and mounting by label or UUID instead of
device name.
If you want to go this way then it's probably best that we pick a
time to do it when we are both around so that any problems can be
rectified. So once you've checked that your VPS is going to boot and
mount its root filesystem by label or UUID, please put in a support
ticket and we'll sort it out.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
7 Feb
7 Feb
9:24 a.m.
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the response!
On 06/02/2011 22:53, Andy Smith wrote:
On Sun, Feb 06, 2011 at 04:28:18PM +0000, Joseph
Heenan wrote:
I've already tried that
- I think correctly, hence the above error is
ENXIO rather than ENOENT. Perhaps I've missed something obvious:
button:~# cat /boot/grub/device.map
(hd0) /dev/xvda
button:~# ls -l /dev/xvda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 202, 0 Feb 6 16:25 /dev/xvda
button:~# update-grub
Searching for GRUB installation directory ... found: /boot/grub
warning: grub-probe can't find drive for /dev/xvda1.
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/xvda1. Check your
device.map.
button:~#
The above did work with the lenny grub, but stopped (I think) as soon as
the squeeze grub-legacy was installed.
I've not found a solution for this yet, but
running
strace -- grub-probe -vvvv --device-map=/boot/grub/device.map -t device /
2>&1 | less
and browsing the output I noticed this line, which I presume is the issue:
open("/dev/xvda", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENXIO (No such device or
address)
I presume the older version of grub-probe was less fussy.
I think you could
temporarily resolve it by also creating a device
node for /dev/xvda that looks like this:
rw-rw---- 1 root disk 202, 0 2010-06-18 17:24 /dev/xvda We can permanently resolve it by changing your block
device to be
xvda instead of xvda1. Actually as previously discussed the new
BitFolk standard layout is a partitioned xvda, but that will be a
bit of work.
Changing your block device name is just a matter of us
editing your config file then you shut down and boot again. Your VPS
comes up with / on xvda instead of xvda1 and it all still works as
long as you're booting and mounting by label or UUID instead of
device name.
If you want to go this way then it's probably best that we pick a
time to do it when we are both around so that any problems can be
rectified. So once you've checked that your VPS is going to boot and
mount its root filesystem by label or UUID, please put in a support
ticket and we'll sort it out.
Okay, that sounds like the way to go, thanks.
I think I'm okay on the label/uuid front - fstab looks like this:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1
LABEL=SWAP swap swap defaults 0 0
and the kopt line in /boot/grub/menu.list like so:
# kopt=root=UUID=e031dfea-0cda-43eb-a9d6-912fed215b99 ro console=hvc0
Are there any other places I need to check before raising a support ticket?
(I presume my current system will reboot okay, as long as the kernel
entry in menu.lst is correct?)
Thanks
Joseph
10:29 a.m.
Hello,
On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 09:24:55AM +0000, Joseph Heenan wrote:
No I think that covers it.
On 06/02/2011 22:53, Andy Smith wrote:
Oh so it is. Hmm, how annoying. This is the sort of thing that made
me change the layout again..
I think you could temporarily resolve it by also
creating a device
node for /dev/xvda that looks like this:
rw-rw---- 1 root disk 202, 0 2010-06-18 17:24 /dev/xvda
I've already tried
that - I think correctly, hence the above error is
ENXIO rather than ENOENT. If you want to
go this way then it's probably best that we pick a
time to do it when we are both around so that any problems can be
rectified. So once you've checked that your VPS is going to boot and
mount its root filesystem by label or UUID, please put in a support
ticket and we'll sort it out.
Okay, that sounds like the way to go, thanks.
I think I'm okay on the label/uuid front - fstab looks like this:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1
LABEL=SWAP swap swap defaults 0 0
and the kopt line in /boot/grub/menu.list like so:
# kopt=root=UUID=e031dfea-0cda-43eb-a9d6-912fed215b99 ro console=hvc0
Are there any other places I need to check before raising a support ticket? (I presume my current system will reboot okay, as long
as the kernel
entry in menu.lst is correct?)
Yes, should do.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
25 Jan
25 Jan
5:02 a.m.
On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:14 +0000, "john lewis" <zen57162(a)zen.co.uk>
wrote:
http://www.debian-administration.org/users/e5z8652/weblog/22
suggest doing
aptitude update
aptitude install linux-image-2.6-686 (use version to suit your
architecture)
***reboot***
aptitude full-upgrade to avoid any udev problems
Thank you for that. Had missed it during my Google searches. The Squeeze
release notes too (thanks Rodridgo!) mention a similar approach.
(http://www.debian.org/releases/squeeze/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.h…
for anyone interested)
Regards.
8:18 a.m.
Rakhesh Sasidharan said:
Now that Squeeze is around the corner, I was wondering
if there are any
special steps I need to take while dist-upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze
since I am running on Xen.
Any experiences/ suggestions welcome!
Do let us know how it goes. My first suggestion would have been 'let
someone else be first!' :)
Ian
3:59 p.m.
On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:18:56 +0000
Ian <ian(a)lovingboth.com> wrote:
Rakhesh Sasidharan said:
It is why I will do it on my home server first. I have upgraded
several time over the years but previous upgrades have not had such big
changes to deal with as the lenny > squeeze upgrade does.
At least with my home server, if the upgrade goes tits-up, I can install
squeeze from scratch using a recent iso, not so simple on a VPS
It looks like grub-legacy won't get replaced by default. I'm using
grub2 on my workstations/laptops but if Xen doesn't like grub2 who am I
to complain ;-)
--
John Lewis
Debian & the GeneWeb genealogical data server
Now that Squeeze is around the corner, I was
wondering if there are
any special steps I need to take while dist-upgrade from Lenny to
Squeeze since I am running on Xen.
Any experiences/ suggestions welcome!
Do let us know how it goes. My first suggestion would have been 'let
someone else be first!' :)
26 Jan
26 Jan
11:10 a.m.
Hello,
On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 03:59:15PM +0000, john lewis wrote:
On Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:18:56 +0000
Ian <ian(a)lovingboth.com> wrote:
Worst case, you can log in to xen shell and do "install
debian_squeeze" and it will do a net install as if you'd booted with
netinstall ISO. :)
Also you can ask support(a)bitfolk.com for a snapshot before you do
the upgrade and if it all goes wrong we will be able to put your VPS
back to exactly how it was before you started it.
So all in all I would rather be upgrading a VPS than a real machine.
;)
Whatever packages you have installed are one thing, but in terms of
the base OS, lenny->squeeze has been pretty painless for me the many
times I've done it now.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
"The electric guitar - like making love - is much improved by a little
feedback, completely ruined by too much." -- The League Against Tedium
Do let us know how it goes. My first suggestion
would have been 'let
someone else be first!' :)
It is why I will do it on my home server first. I have upgraded
several time over the years but previous upgrades have not had such big
changes to deal with as the lenny > squeeze upgrade does.
At least with my home server, if the upgrade goes tits-up, I can install
squeeze from scratch using a recent iso, not so simple on a VPS
11:32 a.m.
Hello,
On Wed, Jan 26, 2011 at 11:10:17AM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
Also you can ask support(a)bitfolk.com for a snapshot
before you do
the upgrade and if it all goes wrong we will be able to put your VPS
back to exactly how it was before you started it.
Someone asked off-list if these snapshots cost anything.
At the moment they don't, but they do take up disk space and
increase disk load so we'll be asking if we can remove them as soon
as possible.
The advantage of a snapshot over a backup is that we can put things
back exactly as they were, as opposed to you having to install a new
VPS and then put back your data and configs manually.
Cheers,
Andy
31 Jan
31 Jan
10:54 a.m.
On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:10:17 +0000, Andy Smith <andy(a)bitfolk.com> wrote:
[snip]
Whatever packages you have installed are one thing,
but in terms of
the base OS, lenny->squeeze has been pretty painless for me the many
times I've done it now.
I've upgraded quite a few systems and none of them has yet managed to
apply the upgrade cleanly. It always fails on some packages and you have
to just keep issuing the:
aptitude full-upgrade
command until it runs cleanly to completion. I've just noticed from those
not-release notes that it's now recommended to use apt-get again rather
than aptitude so perhaps that was my problem. I hadn't managed to find
those notes before.
It may be easier with a VPS because you won't have all the Gnome stuff
installed.
John
1 Feb
1 Feb
5:11 a.m.
Hi,
On Mon, 31 Jan 2011 10:54 +0000, "John Winters" <john(a)sinodun.org.uk>
wrote:
On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:10:17 +0000, Andy Smith
<andy(a)bitfolk.com> wrote:
[snip]
Yup, and that's what the Debian Reference Manual too says:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch02.en.html#_literal_apt_get_l…
Regards.
Whatever packages you have installed are one
thing, but in terms of
the base OS, lenny->squeeze has been pretty painless for me the many
times I've done it now.
I've upgraded quite a few systems and none of them has yet managed to
apply the upgrade cleanly. It always fails on some packages and you have
to just keep issuing the:
aptitude full-upgrade
command until it runs cleanly to completion. I've just noticed from
those
not-release notes that it's now recommended to use apt-get again rather
than aptitude so perhaps that was my problem. I hadn't managed to find
those notes before. 
7 Feb
7 Feb
2:41 p.m.
On 2011 January 24 Monday, Rakhesh Sasidharan wrote:
Now that Squeeze is around the corner, I was wondering
if there are any
special steps I need to take while dist-upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze
since I am running on Xen.
Any experiences/ suggestions welcome!
Just in case this is relevant to anyone.
A warning for PostgreSQL users:
http://petereisentraut.blogspot.com/2011/02/squeeze-postgresql-broken.html
"The PostgreSQL package in Debian squeeze, just released, is linked with
libedit instead of libreadline. This has two interesting properties:
* It crashes.
* You can only enter ASCII characters.
If either of these is a concern, think carefully before you upgrade."
Andy
--
Dr Andy Parkins
andyparkins(a)gmail.com
3:33 p.m.
On Mon, 7 Feb 2011 14:41:37 +0000
Andy Parkins <andyparkins(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 2011 January 24 Monday, Rakhesh Sasidharan wrote:
> Now that Squeeze is around the corner, I was wondering if there are
> any special steps I need to take while dist-upgrade from Lenny to
> Squeeze since I am running on Xen.
>
> Any experiences/ suggestions welcome!
follow instructions in the Squeeze Release Notes, I can't give you the
URL as for some reason I can't access the page
--
John Lewis
Debian & the GeneWeb genealogical data server
4820
days inactive
4834
days old
18 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Andy Parkins -
Andy Smith -
Ian -
john lewis -
John Winters -
Joseph Heenan -
Rakhesh Sasidharan -
Rodrigo Campos