Best way to update from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04?

[jdaviescoates]

I was just looking at:

https://docs.cloudron.io/guides/upgrade-ubuntu-20/

Which suggests actually updating my server.

But I was kinda assuming the best way would be to just start with a fresh Ubuntu 20.04 server and restore a back-up there.

Pros/ cons for each way?

Thanks!

[BrutalBirdie]

@jdaviescoates
I did both

The upgrade to Ubuntu 20 might be faster, depends on what you have to restore. (2TB of Movies?)

I would do a backup, start with the upgrade to 20 and if you don't like something, you can always just do a clean sweep and restore from backup

[girish]

Ubuntu 20 upgrade has worked via dist-upgrade works fairly well. Only thing is one has to baby sit the upgrade and keep pressing 'yes'.

I would do what @BrutalBirdie said, make a backup and then try to upgrade ubuntu. If it doesn't work, restore from backup into new ubuntu.

[robi]

@girish said in Best way to update from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04?:

Only thing is one has to baby sit the upgrade and keep pressing 'yes'.

one can use the -y option for apt to 'assume yes' to all prompts.

[scooke]

Though it is possible, I've always gotten the impression that this type of upgrade is a risky thing to do. Fortunately, with Cloudron's easy backup, and easy restore to new server options, you can give it a try. But in all my years of fiddling with servers I've never once managed to upgrade the OS successfully. Back then all I ran were LAMP stacks so it wasn't a big deal to just start with a new VPS running the new OS and copy everything back. But once things like npm, node, ruby and rails, python, etc., started getting used for web stuff, forget it! Too many things break!

Make that backup, try to upgrade, but do it when you have a window that gives you enough time to fallback on the "restore Cloudron from backup" option.

[jdaviescoates]

@scooke yeah, I definitely think I'm going to migrate to a fresh 20.04 VPS (or maybe even a dedicated server ) instead of just updating my existing 18.04 one.

Now I'm wondering how to do that with minimum downtime?

[girish]

@robi said in Best way to update from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04?:

one can use the -y option for apt to 'assume yes' to all prompts.

this doesn't work with do-release-upgrade for whatever reason.