As a general rule I have always avoided actual upgrades for my desktop environment. The only OS I take that chance with is OS X and even then there are complications that can arise. I have been told Ubuntu has really improved the in place upgrade from what it used to be but to date I have not yet had a solid reason to try it.
However, I do have a server project at work. It was installed with 10.04 LTS Server but never made it out of the configuration stage and into deployment. I need the newer version of Netatalk and it looks like the best way would be to upgrade the OS to the latest LTS version. Obviously I have two options, clean install & reconfigure everything or in place upgrade while hopefully preserving current configurations.
Points for consideration: There is no actual user data on the server yet. So if the upgrade was to go south I would be bummed, but I wouldn't have lost anything other than time. What I really don't want is complications down the road due to an in place upgrade. I had a server about a year ago crash and burn after an update. "Allegedly" it was because of an in place upgrade similar to what I am debating doing. I was told that there was or might have been some legacy sources which I am assuming was believed to cause some file corruption coming off of the upgrade. Having a working system for 6 moths - 2 years and then having it crash due to an in place upgrade would not be a good thing.
So, am I being super foolish for considering an in place upgrade over a clean install? If I took note of the current source file and then checked after the upgrade and removed any old entries if they exist would I have much to fear? Have any of you performed in place upgrades on or for production servers?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and opinions.
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fresh install
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