Migration Plan From Ubuntu 10.04 LTS To 12.04 LTS
Overview
I’m preparing myself to move from 10.04 to 12.04. With 12.04 as the next Long Term Release (LTS) coming in the next release I thought it was time to prepare for the inevitable move from old to new.
Setup
LTS from Canonical has support for 3 years for the desktop but it has been increased to 5 years for 12.04 code named Precise Pangolin. My Linux headed server currently does a lot and I like to treat it as a production system which cannot go down for long periods of time. The following services are being used:
- FreePBX – PBX system which manages the phones in the house
- Energy@Home – Logs power usage at home
- uPNP – Allows streaming of media to the T.v / Playstation 3
- Ampache – Music streaming service
- MythTv – DVR for digital and analogue T.V
Most noticeably the most important one is FreePBX. The rest are good to have but will only cause inconvenience if it was not running. To complicate things slightly the system is currently using LVM. I have never migrated an LVM before.
Hardware
The computer was originally built in 2004 with some minor upgrades including CPU, RAM and HDD but it’s starting to show it’s age. The hardware was bought as a budget secondary desktop computer but has since resided to a headless 24×7 server. Now it has so many services and software running that the load average is constantly above 5 on a AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (1×2.4GHz stock) with 2GB RAM. The system has a 500 watt PSU but consumes around 130 W.
I think it’s time it received some TLC and a well deserved upgrade and it would be perfect if I could time it with the next LTS. Some of the features I’ll be looking for are:
- Gigabit Ethernet (hopefully 2 if possible)
- More than 4 SATA ports
- At least dual core CPU
- Water cooled CPU
Check List
List of things to do before upgrading:
- Backup user files – Music, pictures, etc
- Backup settings – FreePBX, Gnome(possibly), fstab, apache conf, …
- Backup website files
- Backup Database
Test Backup
It’s always important to test the backup to ensure they actually work! Files and databases are easy. They can be restored into a different database and files can be copied to a different computer or different location as long there is enough space.
Summary
I probably won’t migrate on the day of release but I may test the backup plan around that time to make sure everything works. Once that’s done, Setup a VM and try installing and restore some of the backed up data and see if it works.
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS to get extra-long desktop support cycle
Now that Ubuntu 12.03 is out, rebuilding Asterisk and FreePBX isn’t working with the same instructions as Ubuntu 10.04. It seems the FreePBX install scripts are not compatible with the new version and it is a show stopper for me to move completely over to the new OS.