David's Computer Stuff Journal

Ubuntu: update, don't reinstall!

Posted by David N. Welton Mon, 19 May 2008 10:29:00 GMT

I've seen a lot of people talk about simply reinstalling Ubuntu with the latest CD in order to update it to the latest version. I think that's a bad habit from other OS's. For as long as I've used Debian and its derivatives, the ability to update the system has been one of its strong points.

Here are some reasons to run the updates instead of upgrading via a fresh install:

  • You don't lose your old configuration information, and by choosing to see the diff's in configuration files, you can even choose which config files to update, and how.

  • No need to shut down a running system.

  • By keeping an eye on obsolete packages, you really don't build up any cruft at all, so that's not a reason to do a fresh install.

  • With a decent internet connection, it's probably just as fast, if not faster, when you consider it takes a bit of time to get everything installed just the way you want it.

Indeed, yesterday, I upgraded a server I run in Texas from Ubuntu's edgy eft to hardy heron, remotely, with one reboot at the end to make it pick up the new kernel, and the whole thing came off without a hitch!

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  1. Daniel Ruoso
    about 1 hour later:

    I'm one of the people that recommend reinstalling ubuntu rather than trying to upgrade it. But that's because most people don't use only the supported packages, and install things from multiverse and from backports. I'm currently a full Debian user again, and one of the reasons for me to switch back to debian was a failed upgrade from 6.0x to 7.0x that resulted in the machine not booting anymore (failed udev upgrade).

    So, update, don't reinstall! as long as you're using only the supported packages.

  2. Jonas
    about 2 hours later:

    I think a reason some people (a lot?) reinstall instead of upgrade is because earlier the dist-upgrade mechanism in ubuntu was or could be rather well, picky about which installations would run well after the upgrade.

    My feisty to gutsy upgrade was a disaster for example...a lot of things refused to work properly (from a rather vanilla feisty no less). I know it has improved a lot, and the gutsy to hardy upgrades I've performed has worked without a hitch - as did the LTS to LTS server upgrade.

  3. Emmanuel Lécharny
    about 2 hours later:

    I tested Update for every new version of Ubuntu. It always pathetically failed on my laptop. The last update I did was from 7.04 to 8.04, and it left my computer with a kernel panic when booting...

    As I have 10 partitions, and as I only format /, /boot, /bin, /usr and /var..., my data are just safe, as soon as I don't forget to backup /etc before re-installing.

    I wish Update works well, but, eh, this is not the case !!!

  4. jldugger
    about 3 hours later:

    I don't reinstall (my desktop's been running Ubuntu since hoary or breezy I think), but there is a compelling reason to: we can't have only new users testing the installer. Experienced users are almost by definition "worked for me" but that could have been ages ago, before Automatix so brilliantly decided to add incompatible packages etc.

    Most of the developers understand the benefits of dist-upgrade. You may simple be seeing efforts to get Ubuntu developers to test the install, since you run in the same circles as them ;)

  5. camh
    about 4 hours later:

    A couple of unrelated points:

    • Ubuntu do not "support" using apt-get or aptitude to dist-upgrade. They recommend update-manager or something. Quite annoying since I use aptitude to keep track of automatically installed packages and want to use it to dist-upgrade. I still cannot find a description of what update-manager does that's so special.
    • Ubuntu do not "support" upgrading from more than one version ago. With a six month release cycle, it's easy to miss a release. As I get older, I find six months goes faster and faster :-). While you can dist-upgrade (as another commenter has said) it wont always work flawlessly. (Example: gutsy-wallpapers replaces feisty-wallpapers, which replaces edgy-wallpapers. Going from edgy to gutsy has conflicting wallpapers packages. Easy to fix if you know what you're doing, but a lot of people dont - that's why they're using Ubuntu).

    Otherwise, I agree entirely about upgrading. That's why I've switched back to Debian sid - upgrading is all there is - there's no way to install it.

  6. Timo Zimmermann
    about 13 hours later:

    I tend to install Ubuntu on systems of friends who want to try Linux - 3 of them tried a upgrade - 3 got a system that didn't boot or showed many errors and nearly nothing worked.

    If you use Ubuntu it seems to be a good idea to reinstall your system.

  7. Dave Welton
    about 19 hours later:

    All I can say about the botched upgrades is "weird". It does make me suspicious that there's something more to the story than meets the eye, though. Hopefully, some of you who are more expert will provide some bug reports with your observations of what went wrong, so as to help improve the situation, as updating really is a superior solution to a slow, blunt reinstall.