Upgrading to Ubuntu Server 6.10 (edgy)
I’ve now upgraded one of my development servers from Ubuntu Server 6.06 to 6.10 and as promised here are my initial notes and impressions:
This server is configured as a bog-standard LAMP and email server, with a few custom additions like eAccelerator and Tor compiled from source. X-windows and other workstation stuff is not installed… this is a command line development web server. The upgrade process for Ubuntu Server is the same as standard Debian:
- Edit file /etc/apt/sources.list and globally replace word "dapper" with "edgy"
- apt-get update
- apt-get dist-upgrade
- apt-get dist-upgrade (yes, you’re supposed to do this a second time)
All upgraded packages for the new version downloaded and installed automatically without any issues at all. As usual, the package manager asked me what to do each time it encountered config files that I had changed… since it lets you do a ‘diff’ right from within the package manager it’s easy to determine if it’s safe to overwrite the old config file with the newer one, or just make notes on the change to make them manually later.
About half-way through the upgrade, Perl started complaining about the locale not being set correctly but I suspect that was because I had previously installed localepurge from the universe repository. Not a surprise… packages in the unsupported universe and multiverse repositories are not guaranteed to upgrade smoothly. The warning didn’t appear to break anything and the upgrade completed without further messages.
Just like with Debian, differences and warnings are displayed on screen during the upgrade or emailed to root, depending on your preferences. The warnings I encountered were the normal nit-picky little things that I was glad to be informed about, but there was nothing of consequence.
You don’t have to reboot after upgrading Ubuntu (or Debian) but to verify the startup and get the newer kernel it’s a good idea. The reboot was amazing… about 15 seconds after the not the firmware POST completed the box was running! That’s at least a three-fold increase in startup time. I had read that this release replaced the the System V-style init for a new method called "upstart" but never expected such a dramatic improvement. What’s more, my custom System V init scripts in /etc/init.d still executed. Excellent job, Canonical!
Other than the new init method, this release of Ubuntu has only incremental improvements… which is exactly what I want to see in a server operating system. I can do without earth-shattering changes for every single upgrade. On the server side there are minor new versions of most things:
| Package | Ubuntu 6.05 "Dapper" |
Ubuntu 6.10 "Edgy" |
|---|---|---|
| Apache | 2.0.55 | 2.0.55 |
| MySQL | 5.0.22 | 2.0.24a |
| PHP | 5.1.2 | 5.1.6 |
| Perl | 5.8.7 | 5.8.8 |
| Python | 2.4.3 | 2.4.4 |
| GCC 4 | 4.0.3 | 4.1.2 |
| Postfix | 2.2.10 | 2.3.3 |
I’m still in the initial shakedown after the upgrade but so far web, mail, database and other services are running perfectly. Recompiling the eAccellerator module for the updated version of PHP was also without problems. It looks like Canonical has managed to continue the Debian level of quality for their upgrades… my decision to move to Ubuntu might just be paying off.
Update: (Oct 28 2006) Two days after upgrading my development server I still have found no problems. However, it seems many people are complaining about this release (e.g. see here and here) Most problems seems to be with X-windows and workstation users, not server users. It remains to be seen if there are issues with this Ubuntu release itself.
Related posts:
- Ubuntu Server 6.10 released
- Installing Apache mod_evasive in Ubuntu Server
- Thoughts on moving from Debian to Ubuntu Server
5 Responses to “Upgrading to Ubuntu Server 6.10 (edgy)”:
October 29th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Thanks for the quick notes regarding your update, it definitely helped with upgrading my server to Edgy.
October 29th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Glad it helped!
October 31st, 2006 at 1:28 pm
Thanks for the notes, I just encountered an error with the Courier package. It’s noted by Ubuntu as a bug, but there is a workaround for this:
1. backup /var/lib/dpkg/status to a safe location
2. remove all courier entries from /var/lib/dpkg/status (nano it, search=ctrl-w)
3. sudo apt-get upgrade
4. sudo apt-get install courier-imap
This was the only package I found problems with, some packages I also use:
Bind
Spamassasin
Mailscanner
One more thing with the command “uname -r”
Before the upgrade: 2.6.15-26-amd64-server
After the upgrade: 2.6.17-10-server
So I’m not sure if the new kernel is amd64 enabled…
October 31st, 2006 at 3:05 pm
Thanks very much for the info. I’ve been using Dovecot instead of Courier IMAP but will probably go back to Courier (Dovecot seems to only let Squirrelmail see new messages in the inbox, not other folders) so thanks for the heads up.
BTW, yesterday I found a detailed posting on fixing various Edgy problems: http://www.debianadmin.com/ubuntu-edgy-upgrade-common-problems-with-solutions.html
November 16th, 2006 at 7:15 am
Many thanks for these instructions. My server upgrade from Dapper to Edgy has gone relatively smoothly. Knowing in advance that Courier was going to cause pain helped me greatly.