Jump to content
documentation.suse.com / Upgrade Guide
SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.5

Upgrade Guide

This book guides you through upgrades of SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro.

Publication Date: November 14, 2024

Copyright © 2006–2024 SUSE LLC and contributors. All rights reserved.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or (at your option) version 1.3; with the Invariant Section being this copyright notice and license. A copy of the license version 1.2 is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

For SUSE trademarks, see https://www.suse.com/company/legal/. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Trademark symbols (®, ™ etc.) denote trademarks of SUSE and its affiliates. Asterisks (*) denote third-party trademarks.

All information found in this book has been compiled with utmost attention to detail. However, this does not guarantee complete accuracy. Neither SUSE LLC, its affiliates, the authors nor the translators shall be held liable for possible errors or the consequences thereof.

Preface

1 Available documentation

Online documentation

Our documentation is available online at https://documentation.suse.com. Browse or download the documentation in various formats.

Note
Note: Latest updates

The latest updates are usually available in the English-language version of this documentation.

SUSE Knowledgebase

If you have run into an issue, also check out the Technical Information Documents (TIDs) that are available online at https://www.suse.com/support/kb/. Search the SUSE Knowledgebase for known solutions driven by customer need.

Release notes

For release notes, see https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/.

In your system

For offline use, the release notes are also available under /usr/share/doc/release-notes on your system. The documentation for individual packages is available at /usr/share/doc/packages.

Many commands are also described in their manual pages. To view them, run man, followed by a specific command name. If the man command is not installed on your system, install it with sudo zypper install man.

2 Improving the documentation

Your feedback and contributions to this documentation are welcome. The following channels for giving feedback are available:

Service requests and support

For services and support options available for your product, see https://www.suse.com/support/.

To open a service request, you need a SUSE subscription registered at SUSE Customer Center. Go to https://scc.suse.com/support/requests, log in, and click Create New.

Bug reports

Report issues with the documentation at https://bugzilla.suse.com/.

To simplify this process, click the Report an issue icon next to a headline in the HTML version of this document. This preselects the right product and category in Bugzilla and adds a link to the current section. You can start typing your bug report right away.

A Bugzilla account is required.

Contributions

To contribute to this documentation, click the Edit source document icon next to a headline in the HTML version of this document. This will take you to the source code on GitHub, where you can open a pull request.

A GitHub account is required.

Note
Note: Edit source document only available for English

The Edit source document icons are only available for the English version of each document. For all other languages, use the Report an issue icons instead.

For more information about the documentation environment used for this documentation, see the repository's README.

Mail

You can also report errors and send feedback concerning the documentation to <>. Include the document title, the product version, and the publication date of the document. Additionally, include the relevant section number and title (or provide the URL) and provide a concise description of the problem.

3 Documentation conventions

The following notices and typographic conventions are used in this document:

  • /etc/passwd: Directory names and file names

  • PLACEHOLDER: Replace PLACEHOLDER with the actual value

  • PATH: An environment variable

  • ls, --help: Commands, options, and parameters

  • user: The name of a user or group

  • package_name: The name of a software package

  • Alt, AltF1: A key to press or a key combination. Keys are shown in uppercase as on a keyboard.

  • File, File › Save As: menu items, buttons

  • AMD/Intel This paragraph is only relevant for the AMD64/Intel 64 architectures. The arrows mark the beginning and the end of the text block.

    IBM Z, POWER This paragraph is only relevant for the architectures IBM Z and POWER. The arrows mark the beginning and the end of the text block.

  • Chapter 1, Example chapter: A cross-reference to another chapter in this guide.

  • Commands that must be run with root privileges. You can also prefix these commands with the sudo command to run them as a non-privileged user:

    # command
    > sudo command
  • Commands that can be run by non-privileged users:

    > command
  • Commands can be split into two or multiple lines by a backslash character (\) at the end of a line. The backslash informs the shell that the command invocation will continue after the line's end:

    > echo a b \
    c d
  • A code block that shows both the command (preceded by a prompt) and the respective output returned by the shell:

    > command
    output
  • Notices

    Warning
    Warning: Warning notice

    Vital information you must be aware of before proceeding. Warns you about security issues, potential loss of data, damage to hardware, or physical hazards.

    Important
    Important: Important notice

    Important information you should be aware of before proceeding.

    Note
    Note: Note notice

    Additional information, for example about differences in software versions.

    Tip
    Tip: Tip notice

    Helpful information, like a guideline or a piece of practical advice.

  • Compact Notices

    Note

    Additional information, for example about differences in software versions.

    Tip

    Helpful information, like a guideline or a piece of practical advice.

1 Introduction

SUSE® Linux Enterprise Micro allows upgrading from an existing system to the new version. No new installation is needed. Existing data, such as home and data directories and system configuration, is kept intact.

Upgrades between two releases of SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro are supported by SUSE. Whether it is better to upgrade or perform a fresh installation depends on your specific scenario. While upgrades involve less work, fresh installations ensure you benefit from all the new features of a release such as disk layout changes, specific filesystem features, and other improvements. To get the most out of your system, SUSE therefore recommends fresh installations in most scenarios.

In both cases—upgrade as well as a fresh installation—customers need to check if system settings and default values still fit their requirements.

1.1 SLE Micro lifecycle

SLE Micro is released twice a year.

SLE Micro comes with 4 years of general support. For detailed information about the SLE Micro lifecycle, refer to https://www.suse.com/lifecycle.

The general support includes the following features:

  • Technical Services

  • Access to patches, fixes, documentation and the SUSE Knowledge base

  • Support for existing stacks and workloads

  • Support for new deployments

  • Enhancement requests

  • Hardware enablement and optimization

  • Driver updates via SUSE SolidDriver Program

  • Backport of fixes from recent minor versions

  • Security updates

  • Defect resolution

2 Preparing the upgrade

Before you start the upgrade procedure of SLE Micro, you need to perform checks as described in this chapter.

2.1 Identifying the SLE Micro version

If you need to identify the version of an SLE Micro installation, check the content of the file /etc/os-release.

A machine readable XML output is available with zypper:

# zypper --no-remote --no-refresh --xmlout --non-interactive products -i
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<stream>
<product-list>
<product name="SUSE-MicroOS" version="5.1" release="1" epoch="0" arch="x86_64" vendor="SUSE" summary="SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1" repo="@System" productline="SUSE-MicroOS" registerrelease="" shortname="SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro" flavor="" isbase="true" installed="true"><endoflife time_t="0" text="0"/><registerflavor/><description>SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1</description></product>
</product-list>
</stream>

2.2 Read the release notes

Find a list of all changes, new features, and known issues in the release notes. You can also find the release notes on the installation media in the docu directory.

The release notes usually only contain the changes between two subsequent releases.

Check the release notes to see whether:

  • your hardware needs special considerations;

  • any used software packages have changed significantly;

  • special precautions are necessary for your installation.

2.3 Registering and deregistering machines

On registration, the system receives repositories from the SUSE Customer Center (see https://scc.suse.com/) or a local registration proxy like SMT. The repository names map to specific URIs in the customer center. To list all available repositories on your system, use zypper as follows:

# zypper repos -u

This gives you a list of all available repositories on your system. Each repository is listed by its alias, name and whether it is enabled and will be refreshed. The option -u also gives you the URI from where it originated.

To register your machine, run the transactional-update as follows:

# transactional-update register -r REGCODE

To deregister your machine, you can use the transactional-update as follows:

# transactional-update register -d

To check your locally installed products and their status, use the following command:

# SUSEConnect -s

2.4 Make sure the current system is up-to-date

Upgrading the system is only supported from the most recent patch level. Make sure the latest system updates are installed by running:

  # transactional-update patch

2.5 Listing installed packages and repositories

You can save a list of installed packages, for example when doing a fresh install of a new major SLE release or reverting to the old version.

Note
Note

Be aware that not all installed packages or used repositories are available in newer releases of SUSE Linux Enterprise. Some may have been renamed and others replaced. It is also possible that some packages are still available for legacy purposes while another package is used by default. Therefore some manual editing of the files might be necessary. This can be done with any text editor.

  1. Create a file named repositories.bak.repo containing a list of all used repositories:

    # zypper lr -e repositories.bak
  2. Also create a file named installed-software.bak containing a list of all installed packages:

    # rpm -qa --queryformat '%{NAME}\n' >
         installed-software.bak
  3. Back up both files. The repositories and installed packages can be restored with the following commands:

    # zypper ar repositories.bak.repo
    # transactional-update pkg install $(cat installed-software.bak)
    Note
    Note: Number of packages increases with an update to a new release

    A system upgraded to a new (minor or major) version may contain more packages than the initial system. It could also contain more packages than a fresh installation of the new SLE Micro with the same pattern selection. Reasons for this are:

    • Packages were split to allow a more fine-grained package selection.

    • When a package has been split, all new packages are installed in the upgrade case to retain the same functionality as with the previous version. However, the new default for a fresh installation of SLE Micro new versions may be to not install all packages.

    • Legacy packages from the initial SLE Micro may be kept for compatibility reasons.

    • Package dependencies and the scope of patterns may have changed.

2.6 Make a backup

Before upgrading, back up your data by copying the existing configuration files to a separate medium (such as tape device, removable hard disk, etc.). This primarily applies to files stored in /etc and some directories and files in /var and /opt. You may also want to write the user data in /home (the HOME directories) to a backup medium.

Back up all data as root. Only root has sufficient permissions for all local files.

2.7 Disk space

Software tends to grow from version to version. Therefore, take a look at the available partition space before updating. If you suspect you are running short of disk space, back up your data before increasing the available space by resizing partitions, for example. There is no general rule regarding how much space each partition should have. Space requirements depend on your particular partitioning profile and the software selected.

2.7.1 Checking disk space on Btrfs root file systems

On a Btrfs file system, the output of df can be misleading, because in addition to the space the raw data allocates, a Btrfs file system also allocates and uses space for metadata.

Consequently a Btrfs file system may report being out of space even though it seems that plenty of space is still available. In that case, all space allocated for the metadata is used up.

Make sure there is enough free space as the root file system uses Btrfs and might consume significant amount of space. Check the available space on all mounted partitions. In the worst case, an upgrade needs as much disk space as the current root file system (without /.snapshot) for a new snapshot.

The following recommendations have been proven:

  • For all file systems, including Btrfs, you need enough free disk space to download and install big RPMs. The space of old RPMs is only freed after new RPMs are installed.

  • For Btrfs with snapshots, you need as a minimum as much free space as your current installation takes. We recommend having twice as much free space as the current installation.

    If you do not have enough free space, you can try to delete old snapshots with snapper:

    # snapper list
    # snapper delete NUMBER

    However, this may not help in all cases. Before migration, most snapshots occupy only little space.

2.8 Shut down virtual machine guests

If your machine serves as a VM Host Server for KVM, make sure to properly shut down all running VM Guests prior to the update. Otherwise you may not be able to access the guests after the update.

3 Upgrading the system

SUSE offers a command-line tool to upgrade a running system to a new version. The tool provides support for a rollback to an older release. This chapter explains how to upgrade your system step by step.

SUSE releases a new version of SLE Micro at regular intervals. To make it easy for customers to migrate to a new minor version and minimize downtime, SUSE supports migrating online while the system is running.

SLE Micro uses transactional updates to upgrade from one version to the next. This has the following advantages:

  • Canceling is possible until you reboot your system.

  • Simple recovery if there is an error.

  • Possible rollback via system tools—no backup or restore needed.

  • Use of all active repositories.

3.1 Upgrading to a new release

Important
Important: Upgrading to a new release and the networking service

When you perform an upgrade from previous releases, the default network framework remains the same. Since SLE Micro 5.3, the default networking service is NetworkManager. A new installation of SLE Micro is recommended, but if needed, you can switch from wicked to NetworkManager as described in Book “Administration Guide”, Chapter 6 “NetworkManager and wicked”, Section 6.1 “Switching from wicked to NetworkManager”, Switching from wicked to NetworkManager. However, automated migration from wicked to NetworkManager or the conversion of the wicked configuration is not supported. SUSE also cannot guarantee full feature parity when switching to NetworkManager.

If your system is registered with the SUSE Customer Center, make sure to have an Internet connection during the following procedure:

Procedure 3.1: Upgrade to a newer version
  1. The upgrade procedure is performed by calling the transactional-update:

       transactional-update migration
  2. A new snapshot is created.

  3. Current repositories are refreshed.

  4. A list of available migration targets is displayed. Enter a number.

  5. A list of packages to be installed or updated is displayed. Press y to continue with the upgrade procedure.

  6. To complete the upgrade, reboot your system and boot into the target version.

If your system is not registered, proceed as follows:

Procedure 3.2: Upgrading an unregistered system
  1. Change the URL of the update repositories to point to the 5.5.

  2. Run the following command:

    # transactional-update dup

3.1.1 Extensions during upgrade

The SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching and SUSE Package Hub might get updated during the upgrade procedure. If you upgrade from an odd release number to the next even one, the extensions retain the same version. For example, when upgrading from 5.3 to 5.4, the extension versions do not change. Otherwise, the extension versions change.

3.2 Reverting the migration process

If a new release does not work for you, SLE Micro supports reverting the system to the state before the migration process was started by using the transactional-update rollback command.

The detailed procedure for a system rollback is described in Book “Administration Guide”, Chapter 3 “Administration using transactional updates”, Section 3.3 “System rollback”.