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SpongeBOB

Member

From: Brussels

Registered: 2022-02-07

Posts: 127  

Upgrade custom Devuan.

Hi,

I'm using Chimaera 4 and I ❤️ it !

of course I'm looking to upgrade it to Daedalus 5.0 or excalibur

But I've done a LOT of core/system changes like in `/etc/sysctl.d` disabling a lot a Daemon etc etc..

So is an upgrade would be wise ? or should I start with a fresh install ?

Thanks

---

Linux noob, plz be kind

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,492  

Re: Upgrade custom Devuan.

Your choice. There are pros and cons to all ways of doing it.

If you make a fresh install, you'll have to repeat all your changes. Do you have notes of everything you did or are you going to rely on memory. If you changed any system config files, you can find them easily using debsums.

I do it this way on my main desktop system - a fresh install on another partition and eventually migrate the old /home partition to the new system. That way I can easily fall back to the old OS if I need to. This process takes me about one month to complete.

If you upgrade, there's probably less work. Make sure you have a backup of the OS in case it fails. If you changed any system config files, you will be asked what to do with them during the upgrade. I usually look at the diff before deciding whether to take the new config or keep the old. Whichever one you choose, the other will be saved in case you need it.

On less critical systems (e.g. spare laptop) I wipe and install new. Granted, I'm using my own live-iso, so most of the custom configs are already done. Which brings me to yet another way. - Install the new system in a VM,and make all your changes, then make a live-iso snapshot from it and install that for a new system., with or without keeping the old system.

delgado

Member

Registered: 2022-07-14

Posts: 213  

Re: Upgrade custom Devuan.

@fsmithred:  Thanks for debsums!

@SpongeBOB:  My personal preference is to upgrade - beside the good advices above.

stultumanto

Member

Registered: 2023-12-12

Posts: 68  

Re: Upgrade custom Devuan.

Yes, debsums is excelllent, thank you! Running 'debsums -ec' printed all of my edited configuration files to stdout. It found a few I had completely forgotten about. It won't report newly created config files, of course, such as those under /etc/network/interfaces.d/. I doubt there would be a simple way to automate finding those, unfortunately. It would probably be wise to make a note somewhere whenever they are created.

fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,492  

Re: Upgrade custom Devuan.

Maybe this is helpful. It'll show all files in any *.d directory under /etc along with the last modification date. The 'grep -v' parts will filter out things I don't need to see, in this case, /etc/init.d and /etc/rc* (which I just realized will filter out /etc/rc.local which I know I changed.) Add other filters as you see fit. Change the search directory from /etc to something else if you think you changed config files there.

find /etc -wholename "*.d/*" -exec ls -l {} \; | grep -v 'etc/rc' | grep -v 'etc/init.d'