[SAC] [support.osuosl.org #20049] OSGeo: adhoc VM down

[Hamish]

Hamish wrote:
> > adhoc is now back up and running and upgraded to squeeze.
Markus:
> Good - is there anything to know for the upcoming projectsVM
> upgrade?


I don't know about running fsck on a live filesystem; a reboot
of the VM before starting the upgrade might have at least caused
the problem with adhoc to show up with the system in a less risky
state.

I think it is valuable to follow the official release note's
method, especially the bit showing how to keep a log of the bash
session. Probably if doing it again I would have done another
'apt-get upgrade' after upgrading the kernel and udev, before
reboot and clear all packages ready to go (e.g. linux-firmware-
free). [but save 'apt-get dist-upgrade' for after]

Keeping a tarballed copy of /etc in /root somewhere until all is
verified working is sometimes less confusing than dealing
with diffs and .dpkg-old copies of the config files.
keep a log of 'dpkg --get-selections' and manually installed
packages: e.g.
 aptitude search '~i!~M' --display-format "%p %v" --disable-columns

Install+run `mc` first to check that ascii graphics are working,
I had to "export LANG=C" or else the dpkg configure dialogs were
partly unreadable.

Keep notes on dpkg-reconfigure dialogs in case you need to
rerun it again later. (sometimes hard to know the right response
at run-time)

Do it during working hours PST in case someone in Oregon needs
to intervene.

... anything else?


Hamish