Can I update the OS in OpenVZ without a full wipe?

Server9

Hi,

I'm on CentOS on an OpenVZ VPS.
Is there any way to update the OS without a full wipe?

Thanks

raindog308

What's wrong with

yum update

?

Maounique

yum update should work.
If you mean from 5 to 6 or 6 to 7, no, it will most likely fail as well as other distros. Even if it works and your vm boots, many things will be screwed.

Server9

Apologies if I was not clear.

At the moment I'm on CentOS 5.11.
If in the future I wanted to upgrade to say CentOS 8 (or whatever the latest one is at the time), would I be able to do that?

I'm being told by my provider that since the VPS shares the same kernel as the host OS, no kernel upgrades can be done, i.e, no OS upgrades are possible.

The only thing they could offer is a complete reinstallation of the OS which would wipe everything in the process.

So if I wanted to update at a later date I'd have to wipe all my data, which is what I'm trying to avoid...

Thanks

nunim

Maybe try the CentOS upgrade tool to do in-place upgrade ?

http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/CentOSUpgradeTool

With CentOS, I would recommend a complete wipe + reinstallation if you're switching a major version.

century1stop

Server9 said: I'm being told by my provider that since the VPS shares the same kernel as the host OS, no kernel upgrades can be done, i.e, no OS upgrades are possible.

why's that?

Server9

@century1stop said:
why's that?

Quoting their reply: "Generally OSes package the newest version of the linux kernel with their releases, so that's the main issue. "

Maounique

In the case of OVZ, this is not an issue, when a template for centos 8 will come up, will not have the centos 8 kernel, since none of the templates have a kernel, will work with the same kernel the node has, same which powers the 5.x version.

While kernel problems, may, actually, come up from the upgrade due to various libs being "disoriented", there will be other problems too, even if it does "boot" by some chance, it will still be unpredictable and, ultimately unusable without massive manual interventions, i.e. not worth it in time lost compared with backup and reinstall.

century1stop

@Server9 said:
Quoting their reply: "Generally OSes package the newest version of the linux kernel with their releases, so that's the main issue. "

interesting, centos 5 is latest version, haha..........are they using HyperVM?

generally, os version wouldn't be an issue if such templates exist for rebuild. you should be concerned with os encryption, whether 32bit or 64bit. If the host node uses 32bit os, it will not support 64bit for vm.

Server9

@Maounique said:
ultimately unusable without massive manual interventions, i.e. not worth it in time lost compared with backup and reinstall.

Thanks, this is really what I was after.
Basically unless I want the update to bork up, a wipe is unavoidable...