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I have an Ubuntu 7.10 Server running and finally there is time to upgrade it... ;-)

The updating mechanism does not work anymore. Is it actually possible to upgrade, or should I rather install a fresh Ubuntu Server 10.04? If an upgrade is possible, do you have any recommendations?

Thanks, Philip

2 Answers 2

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You can upgrade your installation, even without the repositories, and it's easy:

  • Just put in a CD of the next version, 8.04, and the update-manager will ask if you want to upgrade. From 8.04 LTS you could then upgrade to the next LTS, which is 10.04. So it'd be only two upgrades.

  • You could also just stick with 8.04, since it's supported until April 2013 (on the Server).

The upgrade will probably work perfectly, and in any case it won't break anything. None the less, a fresh installation might give you chance to review your package selection, it will give you a cleaner system (very slightly improved stability) and, most importantly, if you have a good back up, doing the installation is super easy.

I can't decide for you if you want to do a new installation, but whatever you do, you won't break anything, it doesn't really matter.

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    good point...I hadn't thought of doing it that way. Jan 14, 2011 at 15:36
  • Thank you for your answer, I think I will go with the upgrade to 8.04 then. I remember the LVM/RAID configuration (and some other configurations) to be very tedious and the down time should be low. Besides, upgrading to 8.04 will give me some time for consolidations, I'll then soon upgrade to 10.04 if everythings works fine.
    – Philip
    Jan 14, 2011 at 15:43
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Recommendation - clean install. Not a fan of upgrades even with repository support. Without repo support it's a BEAST I would rather not fight. Just thoughts...I would backup /etc and /home, but some of the naming conventions have changed since 7.10 I think(/etc/something.conf to /etc/something.d/something.conf), so it might not be as simple as .conf copying.

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  • Thanks for your answer, actually only a few config files in /etc are custom.
    – Philip
    Jan 14, 2011 at 15:26

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