[Discuss] Debian 11 -> 12

[Kent Borg]

On 5/17/24 17:07, Kent Borg wrote:
> I think I'm going to try something I don't think I have done before: a 
> major Linux version OS upgrade, performed in place. Debian 11 -> 12, 
> in my case. This is just my laptop, no services anyone else cares about.

Looks like I was successful! At minimum I have some emacs futzing to do 
(I opened a Rust source file and that integration is complaining about 
something), and I'll discover other problems, but at first glance it 
seems a success.


And it is official: I don't like ZFS.

I had previously played with it on this machine, so there were various 
ZFS binaries installed…and they were the /only/ thing that caused problems:

>        *** ZFS Version: zfs-2.0.3-9+deb11u1
>        *** Compatible Kernels: 3.10 - 5.10
I looked back on my notes for things I had installed that included the 
letters "zfs" in their names and I removed them and apt quit complaining.

I'm sure it's my fault, that I could have installed some completely 
different version of ZFS and this ancient project had some good reason 
for such discontinuities. Or my original ZFS installation had problems 
that prompted me to do something stupid as a workaround and I was 
tripping over that.

Anyway, XFS didn't fail on me (nor make it my fault). And my old ext2 
boot volume didn't fail, either. Only ZFS tried to stop me from 
upgrading! Good thing I wasn't using it.

Oh, and back when I was playing with ZFS on my laptop I also played with 
ZFS on a Raspberry Pi 4*. Guess what? When I started repeating what had 
worked on my laptop, one of the key ZFS utilities crashed on the Pi 4. 
I'm guessing ZFS's reputation for having ugly sources is related to all 
of this.

File systems should work, before being clever and having cool features 
their primary requirement is to /work/.


Anyway, bravo Debian. The 11 -> 12 upgrade worked.


-kb


* That Raspberry Pi 4? It is my current e-mail server, I finally 
finished setting it up a couple weeks ago when I double checked my work, 
held my nose, and cut over. Well, a several step cut over to make 
reverting easier if needed, but still a cut over. I'm now running SW 
raid 1, XFS, on two spinning disks (yes, I needed a powered USB hub for 
that). Oh, and I did need a custom compiled kernel, but I am booting and 
running off that disk pair; I am /not/ booting off of an SD card, I 
don't trust them. No fans—the PI 4 is the sweet spot at the moment, the 
PI 5 pretty much requires a CPU fan.