Any reason not to run "do-release-upgrade"

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AI-generated summary

Users discuss upgrading an Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS server (end-of-life) via do-release-upgrade, with justin_gordon noting only 7 GB of free disk space. sam warns the upgrade may fail due to insufficient space, suggesting a fresh install as a safer fallback, especially since the system runs Docker. Jagster proposes temporarily resizing the disk to complete the upgrade, then downgrading afterward — though later clarifies that only CPU/RAM can be downgraded, not disk size Jagster. pfaffman confirms disk resizing is one-way and recommends upgrading CPU/RAM, noting minimal downtime is possible with a fresh droplet and SSL cert migration. itsbhanusharma explicitly states do-release-upgrade won’t work on 16.04 and advises backing up Discourse and migrating to a newer Ubuntu or Debian LTS server instead. Overall, consensus leans toward a clean reinstall over in-place upgrade for reliability.

1

When I log into Digital ocean, I’m suggested to run do-release-upgrade.

Any gotchas?

I’ve got about 7 GB of free disk space.

Welcome to Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-210-generic x86_64)

  System information as of Sun Oct 16 05:12:48 EDT 2022

  System load:  0.03               Processes:              144
  Usage of /:   75.2% of 29.40GB   Users logged in:        0
  Memory usage: 81%                IP address for eth0:    192.241.224.165
  Swap usage:   28%                IP address for docker0: 172.17.0.1

  Graph this data and manage this system at:
    https://landscape.canonical.com/

49 packages can be updated.
2 updates are security updates.

New release '18.04.6 LTS' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.
2

Howdy Justin :wave:

My guess is that do release upgrade would fail anyway cause you don’t have enough space.

Not sure what the exact number is but I just upgraded a much newer version of ubuntu and I needed to free a huge amount of space for it to let me through.

Stuff is all in Docker so risk is not super high, you can always just copy some folders onto a clean install and start from scratch if needed.

22.04 is the latest LTS, you are many versions behind.

3

That issue is easy to solve out. Upgrading only disk space to next level and after upgrading going back to old.

But if the droplet is pure Discourse the safiest and fastest way is start a fresh one and then restoring that forum.

4

16.04 is beyond end of life.

You’ll need to resize your disk. You cannot resize to a smaller disk, so once you go bigger you cannot go smaller. You probably want to switch to a newer cpu anyway.

If you don’t care about down time, the upgrade will likely work fine.

If you create a new droplet you can switch with only read only time (if you copy the ssl certs over) and if something goes wrong, you just keep using the old one.

5

Actually can. Or am I misunderstood something and mixing CPU and disk :flushed:

I need more coffee. Only CPU and RAM can be downgrade.

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6

Thanks for confirming! I didn’t think that had changed, but you sounded so sure. :wink:

7

do-release-upgrade won’t work on 16.04. You may take a full backup of discourse and move to a newer server running latest LTS release of ubuntu or debian.