Debian 10 to 11 live in place upgrade?

[TBT]

Rather than opening a support ticket, the Forum may be a more appropriate to ask. With Debian 10 transitioning to EoL, is it possible to live in place upgrade Debian 10 to Debian 11 without breaking Nagios XI?

[gwesterman]

Hi @TBT,

Yes this is possible. To upgrade distros in place, you must backup and restore your XI. Create a backup of your current server (make sure to store a copy somewhere remote - admittedly not utterly in-place), upgrade to Debian 11, and restore.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Thank you!

[TBT]

@gwesterman thanks for the prompt reply. Are you a community member, or Nagios staff? I ask because this was once mentioned on a support call, and the answer was no, it's not possible. I believe it had something to do with a binary compiled at install, but given your reply the restore most likely will address that.

[cnorell]

@TBT,

We generally recommend people do not try an upgrade in place on Debian systems. It might work, but things tend to break more often than not. Doing a server migration to a fresh Debian 11 server is going to be the safer route.

So - what @gwesterman suggests could work, but it could also break.

If you do try an upgrade in place, please ensure you backup both the Nagios XI configuration as well as your Debian server itself should the worst come to pass.

Best Regards,

Cory Norell

[TBT]

@cnorell understandable. So,similar to your suggestion, rather than restore to a fresh Debian 11 installation, we might as well fresh install Debian 12.

Are you aware of any issues restoring XI on a OS version jump like that?

[swolf]

Hi @TBT,

The backup and restore process is the main path we recommend for people who want to change distributions. Some people do run into issues (especially if their system is heavily customized), so we recommend 1) taking a system-level backup (VM snapshot or similar), and 2) using your test system to attempt the distro hop first.

As a side note, I'll point out that Nagios XI doesn't currently support Debian 12, so if you were solid on your choice of Debian you'd still want to fresh install on version 11.

[TBT]

@swolf

Thanks for the info, any idea when we can expect support for Debian 12?

[swolf]

@swolf

Thanks for the info, any idea when we can expect support for Debian 12?

I'm currently not aware of Debian 12 support on the roadmap, though I do know that Ubuntu 24 is currently planned for this summer.
I'll add this thread onto the list for our feature request tracking.