Technical notes on upgrading from wheezy to jessie

This page details some of the issues we've encountered regarding the squeeze to wheezy upgrades, additional information can be found on #7425, squeeze-wheezy-mosh-upgrade, and support-team/server-upgrade-status.

Steps to take

• Ensure current distribution is up to date:

  apt-get update
  apt-get dist-upgrade
  

• Delete all files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d and /etc/apt/preferences.d (these are controlled by puppet and will be replaced when we next run puppet)
• Delete the phpmyadmin database if it exists:

  mysql
  drop database phpmyadmin
  

• Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change wheezy to jessie
• Run: apt-get update to update to the current distribution
• Run: apt-get install dpkg apt to update the package install tools
• Run: apt-get upgrade to upgrade packages that don't have any new dependencies
• Run: apt-get dist-upgrade to upgrade all packages
• Install ruby-rgen

  apt-get install ruby-rgen
  

• Delete /etc/puppet/puppet.conf

  rm -f /etc/puppet/puppet.conf
  

• Run: freepuppet-run to update our configuration files
• Run: apt-get update to refresh the package list
• Run: apt-get dist-upgrade to pull in new packages based on puppet changes
• Run: apt-get autoremove to remove any packages we no longer need
• Run: deborphan look at additional unneeded packages
• Run: apt-get purge $(deborphan) remove those unneeded packages.
• Run: mf-turn-off-auto-fscks to ensure we don't have to wait for fsck's on reboot
• Run: shutdown -h now to reboot the system (yes, we say "-h" which means halt, but our virtualization engine will detect that it is off and restart it for us)
• Ensure that postgrey is running. If not:

  systemctl enable postgrey
  systemctl start postgrey
  

Errors and special situations

• When upgrading phpmyadmin you will be asked if you want to create the phpmyadmin database. Answer Yes. When prompted for the admin password, open a new root terminal and copy and paste the password in /root/.my.cnf.
• Apache has changed from reading /etc/apache2/conf.d to reading /etc/apache2/conf-enabled (which should contain symlinks to /etc/apache2/conf-available). Apache may warn:

  Directory /etc/apache2/conf.d is not empty - leaving as is
  Please note, that directory is considered obsolete and not read anymore by default
  

  Do a directory listing of /etc/apache2/conf.d. If the only files you see are phpmyadmin and maxclients.conf, you can safely: rm -rf /etc/apache2/conf.d. If you see other files, check to see if they have been properly added to /etc/apache2/conf-{available,enabled}.
• Apache may also warn:

  AH00526: Syntax error on line 9 of /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/php5.conf:
  Invalid command 'Order', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
  

• This seems to be due to the order in which Apache and PHP is ugpraded. You can ignore it.
• Apache may warn about:

  The SSLCertificateChainFile directive (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/001-octavia.mayfirst.org.ssl.conf:29) is deprecated, SSLCertificateFile should be used instead
  

  Many of our members still use a ChainFile. Jaime is working on fixing those. You can safely ignore this.

Configuration files to keep

When upgrading, you will be prompted to overwrite some files. You generally want to install the package maintainer's version. If we need to modify the file - those modifications should be handled by puppet so you don't have to worry about them when upgrading.

The following are exceptions to this rule. For the following files, please keep the local version:

• /etc/cron.d/awstats
• /etc/default/grub
• /var/log/sysstat: The newer version of sysstat asks that you delete the current files, do it