Mageia forum

Hi,

Hope this is the proper place to ask this.

Since pandemic required much more in terms of customizing my MGA to work, I would like to avoid having to reset everything again when moving from MGA 7 to MGA 8.

The question is, apart from alien packages like chrome, is it likely to someone have problems after disabling MGA 7 and enabling MGA 8 repos for updating?

Thanks

Well, once 8 has been released, it's the same as upgrading to any other Mageia release.

But as you seem to rely on your installation, I'd suggest to take some notes what you actually needed to customize to be able to easily redo that.
Because longterm it is usually easier and causes less hassle to simply do a fresh installation, and later only selectively migrate back your settings below /home from a backup, and during that time install additional software and do your customizations.
That way, a fresh install including customizations and such should not take more then around 30 minutes or so.

Also, what in particular do you mean by "[it] required much more in terms of customizing my MGA to work" ?

Always have a look at release notes and errata before upgrading.

Especially: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_8_Rel ... m_Mageia_7

doktor5000 wrote:
Also, what in particular do you mean by "[it] required much more in terms of customizing my MGA to work" ?

Well, besides alien packages (chrome, zoom, teams, etc) I also work with basic packages like gcc-devel, gimp, krita, LaTeX (texlive), texstudio, ....
I may be overestimating reconfiguration of all of this or I'm being sowewhat lazy but, anyway, if I could avoid this step it would ge great!

Thanks again

do you have a separate /home partition or just a /home directory?

backup this especially before you upgrade - just in case!

if you choose to upgrade via repo change - it seems you suggest this, any new configuration files can be reset by selectively importing your old ones from your backup.
if you choose to upgrade via CI.iso, choose the upgrade option, then after upgrade completed and you have rebooted, run the cli upgrade a couple of times to upgrade the packages you added after your initial install, as they wont be on the .iso.

Code: Select all

urpmi --auto-update

, just to be sure everything is upgraded.
another option is to run a new install from Mga8 CI.iso but choose not to format /home (if a separate partition), then after completion and reboot, manually add those applications you added to your previous Mga7 install.
if not a /home partition, you will have to import your personal settings / configuration files from your backup.

upgrades from Mga7 to 8 will be tested by QA to the best of their abilities / hardware, but unfortunately, they cannot test every permutation of software installed.
total # of user applications with a GUI on a CI.iso is about 350. the online repos contain thousands of packages

benmc wrote:do you have a separate /home partition or just a /home directory?

Yes, I have a /home in a separate partition. I used to update by fresh installs formating only the /root directory.

It is sounding a little scaring now to keep this habit these days ...

Thanks for the tips

adhefe wrote:It is sounding a little scaring now to keep this habit these days ...

Why do you think that ?

Dear Doktor5000,

This is to be a joke actually. I'm not a english native speaker, sorry for misundertandings

But, indeed, I would not like to go through all the required steps to configure my MGA after a fresh install if I could avoid it.