i can no longer recommend PartedMagic after discovering multiple reports of very poor customer service.

see these links for just a few such instances:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/8k61r6/partedmagic_anyone_else_still_using_it_any/

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/partedmagic.com

edited: added more content

I think grub-customizer probably uses it.
But I have not used that application in more a good long while, when I had another HDD with another version to test.

That said, when/if upgrading, the idea is to clone the system drive, set the box to boot from the clone and only then do any upgrade.
Then, if there are no issues, make an image of that drive to restore back to the system drive.

As this is a BIOS boot (no UEFI stuff) box, any other OS boot issues generated by the OS-prober can be easily fixed there.

If I decide to continue with attempting this upgrade, the system drive will be fully updated and cleaned of left over cruft/orphans before cloning it.

Thanks for reminding me.
Seems it was up to date because during the experiment (see part II, link below) there were no warnings in the terminal printout.

And I accepted all the default options when given the choice.
Not sure that was a good thing as I once had a severe problem with the default Devuan MTA, Exim4 by doing just that.
ie: accept default suggestions when updating/upgrading. 

TL;DR: I removed/purged it and in its place installed a lightweight and much better maintained one called procmail.
After all, I was only needing a local MTA, nothing too elaborate.

Just works and in three years' use it has never given me any grief, to the extent that I had to actually look up the package name.  8^°

Thanks for your input.

Best,

A.

Note: I will mark this as SOLVED to this thread will continue in part II here.

Also I'd update critical packages first before just doing a mass upgrade. You can start with backported stuff first is a good idea to help make the transition smoother.

You're also going to want to make sure you have an up to date keyring there was a point when you had to manually install it when upgrading from beowulf.

Thank you very much.
I'll have a look at all that.

Best,

A.

@Altoid
To come back to system backup / restore / cloning, I have posted information about some efficient methods here:
https://codeberg.org/Andre4freedom/Devu … ods-v3.pdf

Oh, BTW: if you find issues in this textual information, please let me know! Thanks!

I hope it works and helps!
Have a good weekend!

I tried several times, and could never get the password setting/confirmation/forgot-password-recovery thing working....
I give up with git. (https://git.devuan.org/)
I have the "neutralized" document about disk-cloning for any system ready and can send it wherever you wish. Possibly for review, discarding if worthless, editing if somebody wishes so.. Just to be sure: the procedure was used professionally to deploy courses and also for migration and test-scenarios.
Sincerely, Andre4freedom

Adapting FF and other browser profiles took days even weeks as did adapting to the new interfaces and options.

I once had the same problem.

Right now I'm just copying the .mozilla folder. Everything is OK with access rights, if on another computer, then via a USB flash drive with fat32, and if in the shared /home directory between users, then they can view each other’s directories.

Then sometimes you need to select a profile if FF has chosen a new one, and sometimes it loads the required one itself, I delete unnecessary profiles.

The same procedure applies to Thunderbird.

Always done that.
I started with Devuan Jesse in this box and from then on up to Beowulf (now with a backported kernel) was like that.
I opted out of Chimaera because of WiCD and SLiM, this last one having been revived.

But the 'Debian Way' ® is not what it was, between the bloat, the infamous usr/merge and who knows what else is lurking around there, I am rather wary.
Who knows what sending it may bring about.

I will probably clone my system 120Gb SSD drive to an empty 300Gb SAS I have in the slots.
Boot from there and see what happens when I send it and reboot.
Cannot wait to see my dmesg printout. 8^D

That said, I have noticed that what I see as the most important part of my screed has not gathered the much attention.
ie:

Thanks a lot for your input.

Best,

A.

wicd is not available with chimeara, but it is with beowulf (and ascii).

I think the other main change (for me) was su is changed to su -

Chimeara has Songwrite... and sysinit orphan startup scripts...

my 2 cents worth.

regards Glenn

Right.

Yes, BackInTime takes care of my /home directory and Timeshift takes care of /etc so that is covered.

re: gnome-disk-utility
I had my doubts which is why I asked.
Seeing that no one among 400+ visits answered with a clearly pronounced yes I won't be using it.

Thanks for your input.

Best,

A.

To use Clonezilla, you would need to boot to a live CD/DVD/USB system that (preferably) comes with Clonezilla.

Or just use clonezilla live, which is lightweight, Debian-based (though that also means systemd, unfortunately), and allows for things like easy creation of bare-metal recovery media.

On the OP... The only way to be sure is to send it. Personally I have machines that have been dist-upgraded all the way from Lenny, and while there are always things to attend to they are usually pretty minor and far less trouble than a fresh install - especially if you avoid leaving it until you are multiple releases behind stable.

Either way, if you don't like the result you just restore your backup (or swap drives if you go for a live clone). No harm, no foul.

If I were to go ahead, I will need to make a foolproof image of my system drive, a Kingston 120Gb SSD.

Although there are a number of ways to accomplish this, I prefer to use Clonezilla. To use Clonezilla, you would need to boot to a live CD/DVD/USB system that (preferably) comes with Clonezilla. Refracta is a good choice for this. For good measure, you could also make a second backup using FSArchiver.

It would also be prudent to make separate additional backups of /etc and /home using an archiver utility like tar.

No.