Subject: Re: [vserver] Vserver migration: Debian Sarge to Etch
From: Corey Wright <undefined@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:03:36 -0500

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:25:36 -0700 (PDT)
Alejandro Facultad <alejandro_facultad@yahoo.com.ar> wrote:

> Dear all, I have a Debian Sarge base host with a vserver kernel, that
> supports two vservers also with Debian Sarge. Now I have to migrate
> Debian from Sarge to Etch.

sarge?  not one to require security support, are you? ;-)

> I think I have to do the following:
> 
> 1) Set Etch repositories in the Debian base host and upgrade the system
> 2) Set Etch repositories in both the vservers and upgrade the system

i usually upgrade a few guests first and once i've convinced myself there's
no problems (with the upgrade process or running an upgraded install), then
i upgrade the host.

> Is it OK or is there any trick to upgrade the vservers from Sarge to
> Etch ????

one trick is to look
through /usr/lib/util-vserver/distributions/etch/initpost from util-vserver
and see if anything after 'echo ">>> Executing post install script ... "'
applies to an upgrade (as compared to a new installation).

specifically pay attention to 'for i in ...; do $_VSERVER "$NAME" exec
update-rc.d -f "$i" remove; done' because in that is a list of init scripts
(well, technically symlinks to init scripts) that are hardware-specific and
can print ugly error/warning messages on guest startup/shutdown (as it
doesn't have access to the hardware).

so upgrade util-vserver on the host, then execute that "for i in ..."
command in each guest after upgrading to etch.

those are my only tips (besides herbert's "make a clone/copy/backup before
upgrading").

corey
-- 
undefined@pobox.com