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Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3

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On Thu 21 Apr 2022 at 07:03:01 (-0500), Richard Owlett wrote:
> I am not upgrading in place.
> 
> I currently have Debian 9.13 installed on one partition with /home on
> a different partition.
> 
> I will install Debian 11.3 on a fresh partition and have /home remain
> on its current partition.
> 
> I'm aware of cautions about upgrading in-place  cf [https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html]
> 
> Are there things to be aware of when using the same /home partition on both?

Apart from the things that hit you anyway when you upgrade,
like the disappearance of Python2, and incompatible dotfiles
that might or might not be automatically adjusted for you,
you may have to cope with retaining the older versions of
configuration files so that you can boot back and forth.

I use symlinks where necessary, so I have the Debian codename
written at the end of the first line of my sources.list, and
that sets $Mycodename accordingly. Some symlinks are also
handling $HOSTNAME so that I can share configuration files
between different machines.

When I start using a new version, I move the dotfiles for some
packages out of the way, and let a new set be written. Then
I diff the new dotfiles against a set of virgin dotfiles from
the previous version to see what's changed, and make appropriate
changes to my own set of files.

Firefox can be a pain, so I set up a global variable that contains
$HOSTNAME-$Mycodename pairs which prevent me from accidentally
upgrading FF before I'm ready, or accidentally running the
previous version on any given machine.

Again, if you run several machines, you might want to copy the
/etc/ssh/ keys from the old version to the new installation for
a peaceful life.

If you have multiple users, then you want to make sure you use the
same UIDs between versions and machines. Be careful if you copy
system files between any of them, because certain packages use
their own UID/GIDs, like exim (Debian-exim), apt-cacher-ng,
which could translate into randomly different users elsewhere.
(Most stuff is root/root.)

Alsa: symlinked to the real files in /etc, that 1000 owns.
Audacious: symlinks. Might be historical—I've been at it for years.
Cups: verboten pre-bullseye.
Lilypond: installed, but I only run downloaded tarballs from /home.
Mc: symlinks were even required for libav/ffmpeg at one time.
Mutt: needed the FF-style fix (above) when it had that write_bcc bug.
X: as long as xtoolwait still runs, no version switches at present
(only between hosts).

Those are some that spring to mind.

Disclaimer: I don't run any DE, let alone a variety of them, nor
do I make serious use of *Office except as a viewer. I'm just running
"standard" Debian, and taking my time over upgrading several, very
different machines.

Cheers,
David.

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Thread

Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Richard Owlett <rcowlett@cloud85.net> - 2022-04-21 14:30 +0200
  Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2022-04-21 14:40 +0200
  Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-04-21 15:00 +0200
    Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Richard Owlett <rcowlett@cloud85.net> - 2022-04-21 17:00 +0200
      Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Christian Britz <cbritz@t-online.de> - 2022-04-21 17:20 +0200
        Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Richard Owlett <rcowlett@cloud85.net> - 2022-04-21 20:30 +0200
          Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-04-21 23:00 +0200
    Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2022-04-21 22:10 +0200
      CMOS clock (was: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3) Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2022-04-21 23:30 +0200
        Re: CMOS clock (was: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3) David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2022-04-22 02:40 +0200
        Re: CMOS clock (was: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3) <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-04-22 07:30 +0200
  Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2022-04-21 15:00 +0200
    Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Richard Owlett <rcowlett@cloud85.net> - 2022-04-21 16:10 +0200
  Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Kenneth Parker <sea7kenp@gmail.com> - 2022-04-21 15:50 +0200
    Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Richard Owlett <rcowlett@cloud85.net> - 2022-04-21 17:20 +0200
      Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Kenneth Parker <sea7kenp@gmail.com> - 2022-04-21 18:50 +0200
  Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Bret Busby <bret@busby.net> - 2022-04-21 17:30 +0200
  Re: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2022-04-21 19:30 +0200
  [Path forward] WAS: Changing from Debian 9.13 to Debian 11.3 Richard Owlett <rcowlett@cloud85.net> - 2022-04-22 11:00 +0200

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