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Idea #7972: Upgrade non-destructive "clean install"

Written by ayeomans the 2 May 08 at 08:51. Category: Installation. Related project: Nothing/Others. Status: New
Rationale
Rather than perform an upgrade by modifying all the software packages, and risking breakage, it should be possible to do a clean install of an equivalent system into a new partition.

So the upgrade process would be:-
- Create a new root partition for the new system
- Examine package list of old system
- Cleanly install all these packages (with some replacements as necessary) to the new partition
- Create grub menus to boot both the new and the old system
(Yes, I've skipped a few complexities)

This would also be *extremely useful* in enterprise environments, as it gives a quick recovery path if something fails during the upgrade. And also give lots of re-assurance that you won't end up with a non-functioning system.
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Solution #1: Auto-generated solution of idea #7972
Written by ayeomans the 2 May 08 at 08:51.
Ubuntu Brainstorm was updated in January 2009. Since the idea #7972 was submitted before this update, its rationale and solution are not separated. Please vote accordingly, and if you have the necessary rights, please separate the rationale from the solution. Thanks!

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steve196 wrote on the 2 May 08 at 10:13
If there is a possibility to import/export the installed package list of apt, then doing that and copying your home directory should do it. One of the two systems must not be permitted to upgrade grub.

tgape wrote on the 2 May 08 at 11:32
If grub used /boot in a portable manner, then so long as /boot was its own partition, enabling it to be properly shared between the different "systems", there should not be any problem running grub from both.

If grub could extract its configuration into files, such that one could grab the current config, update it, and store the new version, there would not be any problem running grub from both, so long as some form of revision sanity was performed.

vexorian wrote on the 2 May 08 at 12:48
So, what's exactly the reason you are not using the live-cd to install on the new partition and just keep your /home ?

ayeomans wrote on the 9 May 08 at 10:51
@vexorian - that's basically what I do on an individual machine. But it's still a messy process to duplicate the set of packages on the new partition.

One point I didn't make clear, was that I'd like the clean-partition installation to be done without needing to stop the current system. Especially for a server; having a single re-boot installation minimises downtime.


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