Best way to upgrade to jessie

What is the best way to upgrade Wheezy to jessie? Will dist-upgrade after change the sources.list good enough? Thanks.
I don't know if this issue has been discussed before. If it did, sorry for my ignorance.

Twinclouds,

- backup your rootfs
- change apt source to Jessie
- remove flash-kernel if installed
- apt-get update
- apt get dist-upgrade
- regenerate uInitrd.

You will be automatically changed over to systemd. To boot back to sysvinit (I did), install sysvinit-core and other 2 packages(forgot which ones, will post these for you if needed). Systemd was fine, no problem, however I like to reserve my judgment for a while longer. I am running one NAS with systemd to test it.

A few things to watch for:
- samba config needs to update before running (samba is upgraded to version 4).
- rootfs label is working, but mount output has misleading bug (minor).
- smbnetfs has bug (minor)

-bodhi
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Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2015 06:10PM by bodhi.

Bodhi:
Thanks for your quick reply. One question, is the procedure to generate uInitrd the same as when you upgrade Wheezy kernel, say from 3.14 to 3.16? Or if I need to do something else, please let me know also.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/21/2015 07:03PM by twinclouds.

twinclouds Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Bodhi:
> Thanks for your quick reply. One question, is the
> procedure to generate uInitrd the same as when you
> upgrade Wheezy kernel, say from 3.14 to 3.16? Or
> if I need to do something else, please let me know
> also.

The same command. You can copy/paste from the 3.18.5-tld-1 kernel release post.

-bodhi
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@bodhi, thanks, that's much more comprehensive than I would have said ! ... and very useful to see your more experienced take in it :D

I've done it quite a few times and found jessie to be pretty stable on all devices. I use jessie on my "main" computers too, although haven't as yet been able to kick Win 7, which I use for photo editing and some other stuff, like typing this message ...

systemd seems to work OK I can confirm, but I'm certainly no expert on it, usually I just need to do things like "service networking restart" !

Cheers

Don Charisma ... because anything is possible with Charisma

My blog - http://DonCharisma.org
Our commercial site - http://DonCharisma.com

@Don,

I've been running jessie on a few of my NAS boxes for a while. But I've kept finding stuff that are broken, so I did not want to upload a new rootfs until now. I'm sure we will find other things needed updated as we go.

One bug that bugs me (pun intended :) is that smbnetfs attributes copying problem kept coming back. I like smbnetfs in that it works like Windows network neighborhood. But once in a while during an upgrade, attribute such as timestamp is broken.

-bodhi
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@bodhi - I don't think there's any rush with uploading jessie rootfs, the upgrade path works and is fairly painless.

Debian and linux is still fairly new to me, so it all tends to be "testing" ... however I am learning, slowly, that things happen quicker when one doesn't have to spend hours fixing this and that ... "upgrades" and "updates" aren't always an improvement :D

Samba is on my list again, so will look at smbnetfs ... Samba I've always found "fiddly" on linux, but partly due to my still learning about things like groups, permissions etc.

Cheers

Don Charisma ... because anything is possible with Charisma

My blog - http://DonCharisma.org
Our commercial site - http://DonCharisma.com

Hi, bodhi:
Could you let me know which are packages that I need install as you said in "install sysvinit-core and other 2 packages"? Thanks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2015 05:39PM by twinclouds.

twinclouds,

Install these 3 packages: sysvinit-core, sysvinit, and sysvinit-utils.

-bodhi
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Hi, Bodhi,
I upgraded to jessie and everything looks fine. However, when reboot, I cannot login anymore. I googled and found it does not allow root access through ssh anymore. I didn't have another user added. What I need to do now? Do I need to reinstall or if there's any trick I can play? Thanks in advance for your help, as always.

Do you have serial port access? If so, login as root there to a shell and add a new user.

Or you can take disk to another Linux machine, mount it as root and then copy some regular user's data from that machine's /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files to the same files on the mounted disk. Then shutdown the machine and return the disk to the other machine, boot it and log in as the copied user.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2015 09:58PM by Frederick Grayson.

twinclouds,

> I upgraded to jessie and everything looks fine.
> However, when reboot, I cannot login anymore. I
> googled and found it does not allow root access
> through ssh anymore.

This is strange, it should not happen. I dont't have this problem. Ah, I recall now, there was a question regarding root ssh login. You must have selected a wrong option.

As Frederick suggested, if you have serial console then login as root. But then reenable root login. There is no need to create another user.

You could restore your old rootfs boot back and reinstall, too.

-bodhi
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I'm of the opinion that best practice is to disable root ssh logins, and login as a regular unprivileged user. If root access is required, then su to root from within the unprivileged user shell.

Another way to solve the problem would be to mount the disk on another Linux machine, edit the /etc/sshd_conf file and change the line for

PermitRootLogin no

to

PermitRootLogin yes

Assuming that's the only place where it was restricted, and you don't want to create another user.

> I'm of the opinion that best practice is to
> disable root ssh logins, and login as a regular
> unprivileged user. If root access is required,
> then su to root from within the unprivileged user
> shell.

It is certainly appropriate and a good practice to do that for desktop users. But we are hardcore embedded Linux devices modders ;)

-bodhi
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LOL. In that case you don't even need ssh access. You should be able to connect via telepathy ;)

Kidding aside, when you are modding the boxes, you should be root all the time. When you are using the box as a user, then you should not be root.

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Agreed, 100%

@twinclouds,

Let us know what your resolution was. It'll help others upgrading to jessie.

-bodhi
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Bodhi:
Eventually, I reinstalled jessie by using a image of 3.16 I saved before. This time, I made sure the root login is enabled and everything works fine now. To safe, I also created a regular user but that was not needed now. I can login as root with no problem.
The purpose of upgrading to jessie was to try out Asterisk 11 by apt-get and it works now. Wheezy can only directly install Asterisk 1.8.
Thank you, Frederick and others for the suggestions. I know I can always get help from this board.

twinclouds,

> The purpose of upgrading to jessie was to try
> out Asterisk 11 by apt-get and it works now.
> Wheezy can only directly install Asterisk 1.8.

Awesome! this is what I was curious to know. Thanks for the hint.

-bodhi
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You are welcome.