upgrade to jessie, what to backup

[Tom Fowle]

tony,
thanks for all this. Looking at the upgrade documentation leaves me
thoroughly  intimmidated. My major reason for upgrading was to get beyond
the current kernel crash that happens a couple 3 times a week.  However with
my lack of experience, I'd be pretty sure trying the upgrade would be a
bigger mess.
I'll re-evaluate the situation from time too time especially if/when they
stop supporting jessie, and see what happens.
Thanks again.
Tom Fowle (official wimp!)

On Thu, Nov 05, 2015 at 02:22:55AM -0800, Tony Baechler wrote:
> I know this seems obvious, but did you make a tar archive of /etc in
> single user mode?  Just doing a file copy to an external drive won't
> usually work because file permissions aren't preserved.  Most
> external drives are formatted as NTFS or FAT32 and are not suited
> for file backups.  Making a tar archive of /etc is generally safer
> and does preserve permissions.  This command should work, but if
> not, someone will hopefully correct me:
> 
> cd /
> tar cf etc.tar etc
> 
> You might want to check the official Jessie release notes here:
> 
> https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
> 
> I suggest installing something like Screen or tmux, just in case the
> upgrade takes longer than planned or somehow leaves you without a
> working shell.  It is very useful to be able to create a new window
> to check configuration files, manuals, web sites, etc.  You can
> detach, create new windows, etc. Also, keep a script of the output
> as sometimes messages and warnings are displayed which you might
> miss.  You do that with the script command.  Run "script" first
> before starting the upgrade but after launching screen or tmux.  You
> want to be especially careful about upgrading your kernel and
> probably want to do that separately after the system upgrade, but
> follow the guidance in the release notes if in doubt.
> 
> On 11/4/2015 10:38 PM, Tom Fowle wrote:
> >Planning to upgrade from wheezie to jessie.
> >Backing up to a usb external hard drive, I've done everything under /home
> >and /etc.
> >Is there anything else I should backup? or other things to be aware of
> >before or during the upgrade?
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