Upgrade 15.10 32-bit to 16.04 64-bit

[OiPenguin]

I bought a decent server a few months ago and installed Ubuntu desktop with server setup and use the machine as a headless server. Due to some issues with the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 15.10 (total system freeze during installation) I decided to use the 32-bit version. I would prefer to change to 64-bit when upgrading and understand that a clean install is preferable (rather than upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit).

I've got a raid10-setup (currently with one SSD and 2 x 3GB HD for raid, but will add to more at a later stage). This is the essential parts of my setup:
- /data - Homevideos, pictures etc in sub folders
- /home - home areas of family members

Can I do a regular advanced installation where / is reinstalled and formatted, but retain the current /data in the same way as I usually retain /home/ when doing a clean install on my laptop?

A sidenote: Assuming proper backup, is 16.4, although not final nor production ready, stable enough to upgrade to for this server during the coming weeks?

Yours,

Lars

[goofprog]

Honestly to me, I believe that it is not a good upgrade from 32 to 64 bit Ubuntu. If the problem is just retaining data on a fresh installation then I would just back up the data to an external drive and copy it back over to the new 64 bit OS. I mean it seems the easiest way to do it.

[grahammechanical]

Are /data & /home on separate partitions? If so, then re-installing into the / partition and formatting the partition will not touch /home (especially if you do not tick to format) or /data.

Regards.

[OiPenguin]

Are /data & /home on separate partitions? If so, then re-installing into the / partition and formatting the partition will not touch /home (especially if you do not tick to format) or /data.


Yeah. Both /data and /home are on seperate partitions. I've posted my entire setup below.



user@server:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3,9G 0 3,9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 799M 11M 789M 2% /run
/dev/sdc5 23G 12G 11G 52% /
tmpfs 3,9G 84K 3,9G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5,0M 4,0K 5,0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 3,9G 0 3,9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sdc6 81G 47G 30G 62% /home
/dev/sdc1 922M 137M 722M 16% /boot
/dev/md0 2,7T 946G 1,7T 37% /data
cgmfs 100K 0 100K 0% /run/cgmanager/fs
tmpfs 799M 56K 799M 1% /run/user/1000
tmpfs 799M 0 799M 0% /run/user/1004

[mörgæs]

understand that a clean install is preferable (rather than upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit).


Not only preferable, it's the only way to go. One can't upgrade from 32 to a 64 bit version.

Would be great if you could test 16.04 and report the bugs if you find any.

[oldfred]

If you have installed lots of applications, you want to export that list.
from lovinglinux - use dpkg to list installed apps
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=7157175&postcount=5


And your /etc/fstab, so you do not have to manually recreate all your mounts. You may have other entries in /etc and if a server various installed apps inside / (root) that you want to save settings or databases.

So good backups are required to make it easy to restore to a good working install.

[OiPenguin]

Thanks for all replies. I've upgraded (clean install, /home kept) my laptop, but will wait until the final version before upgrading my server. Upgrade were fairly smooth, but my language keyboard was not available before I upgraded all packages and rebooted.

The tip about how to backup all packages were great. I've not used it for the laptop since part of my problem was that I had installed too much clutter, but I may use it when upgrading my server.