OM Lx distribution upgrade

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A distribution upgrade is upgrading from one version of OM Lx to another. Examples are upgrading from OM Lx 4.1 to 4.2 or from OM Lx 4.2 to Rolling.

A system upgrade is simply upgrading the packages within a given version of OM Lx. Example is upgrading the packages in OM Lx 4.2. There is a thread here with more about system upgrade and how to post in forum if you have an issue.

A system upgrade is a rather simple procedure and rarely causes problems itself. There may be problems with individual software that is upgraded. Many users do this daily or weekly. Doing system upgrades should be done at a minimum monthly but we recommend weekly.

A distribution upgrade is inherently more complicated with more moving parts. It requires specific commands, and possibly options appended to those commands. Also each specific instance may have special instructions. We usually post those as each situation occurs. Usually? We are a small, all volunteer, part-time group so sometimes things don’t happen as quickly as we wish. Users should look in forum for any threads about the type of distribution upgrade they are about to attempt before doing it. If you are in doubt please ask.

The basics of doing a OM Lx distribution upgrade:

  1. First be sure your current system is fully upgraded. Recommended to do this from command line in Konsole like this:

First:

`$ dnf clean all ; sudo dnf clean all`

Then:

`$ sudo dnf upgrade | tee /home/your_user_name/upgrade.log`

Where you replace your_user_name with your actual user name. This command string creates a file in your home directory called upgrade.log in case something goes wrong.

  1. Change repositories to the branch (aka: distribution or channel) you wish to upgrade to.

So for a user wishing to upgrade from Lx 4.2 to Rolling first upgrade your 4.2 system then change repositories from rock (or possibly release) to rolling. You can use the Software Repository Selector to do this quite easily.

  1. Now you are ready to do the distribution upgrade. We do this with a different command, instead of upgrade we will be using distro-sync. Sometimes there are problems with things like renamed packages that require the use of an option --allowerasing.

This we insist the users only do in Konsole or other terminal. The basic commands are as follows:

First run this command:

$ dnf clean all ; sudo dnf clean all

Then:

$ sudo dnf distro-sync | tee /home/your_user_name/upgrade.log

If you run in to problems the smart thing to do is stop and ask in this forum in English/Support or on IRC. But frequently the problems can be solved by adding the option --allowerasing.

$ sudo dnf --allowerasing distro-sync | tee /home/your_user_name/upgrade.log

Sometimes this is all that is required but again users should look in the forum for any special instructions for their specific circumstance before doing this.

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Note: The upgrade and distro-sync commands in the previous post will overwrite the file upgrade.log in your home directory every time you run the command. Normally you only need to keep a log of the most recent upgrade until you are sure there are no problems. However you may want to give the file a unique name every time so you save all the logs. Like update.log, update1.log, update2.log, ect. Perhaps save them for a month or two not forever.

Note: There is a /var/log/dnf.log kept so information about all dnf transactions is available if needed. This log is difficult for users to follow hence the recommended command to create the simple file update.log .

Note: You can combine single commands in a command string with the semi-colon. Like this:

$ dnf clean all ; sudo dnf clean all ; sudo dnf distro-sync | tee /home/your_user_name/upgrade.log

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