[sf-lug] Linux Server Preferences

[Akshay Shah]

On 05 Nov 2009, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
>Is it really true that there's no alternative to personally noticing
>that 6.06LTS has been obsoleted by 8.04LTS, manually editing all
>"dapper" references in /etc/apt/sources.list to "hardy", and running the
>upgrade semi-manually with spare time available in case something
>crucial blows up?   Why isn't there?

I'm only a hobbyist and have never even attempted setting up something
as production-y as a headless server, but I think there's an official
upgrade tool for exactly the situation you're describing.  I moved off
Ubuntu a while ago, so I'm a little rusty - please bear with me.

Update your package repository:
   sudo aptitude update
Upgrade most packages:
   sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
Upgrade everything else:
   sudo aptitude full-upgrade
Install the console update utility:
   sudo aptitude install update-manager-core
Upgrade to the latest release:
   sudo do-release-upgrade

 From what I remember, do-release-upgrade has a lot of options to
control exactly which release/development version you upgrade to.  And
if you're really nervous, I think apt-listbugs works with
do-release-upgrade, but I've never tried it.  Again, I'm only a
desktop user - this approach may have some obvious flaw, but I thought
I'd pipe up anyways.

Cheers,
Akshay