OS Upgrade

[tf7300]

I'm running Jellyfin backend on Ubuntu server(no gui). It's been running great for a year or so. Now Ubuntu OS says :new release available" Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade it. I'm assuming it will upgrade all packages too...Jellyfin included. Will this destroy the Jellyfin install? Or is the better option to just a fresh install of everything? Aking to see if anyone has done the upgrade successfully.


Server: mserver
Version: 10.8.13
Operating System: Linux
Architecture: X64

[tmsrxzar]

you're only going to get opinion responses

in my opinion based on my experience it is *usually better to install fresh major linux versions instead of upgrades
also with that you get a fully fresh system with no left behind packages you forgot you installed as well as clean config

in general practice, a lot of other people have success with just upgrading

[TheDreadPirate]

Some sound advice when doing ANY major changes is to backup critical data (/var/lib/jellyfin and /etc/jellyfin). I've done OS upgrades in the past without issue. I am assuming you are either on an old, soon to be EOL LTS or you are on a non-LTS version (23.04?).

[Host-in-the-Shell]

Well, my experience is not with Ubuntu, but with Debian instead, so make of that what you will. I've been running a WordPress site (That I've now converted to ClassicPress) since around September 2010. In all that time I only reinstalled once, mainly because I was changing the server hardware from an old 32bit laptop to a newer 64bit laptop, and I didn't understand the process of converting my installation into another architecture, although I'm sure that was also possible if I had taken the time to figure it out, but I was fairly new and inexperienced with hosting at the time. That was around 2012, so since then I've upgraded between versions without much issue until this very day.

My advice: before you do anything to your system, you should backup everything that you can't afford to lose. And by the way, having a backup solution should not be something that you do only before a potentially breaking change, but a regular countermeasure that you deploy on any machine(s) which contain critical data; get on it yesterday if you haven't. Now, I won't lecture you about what backup software to use and how, but I will recommend that for extra important data you consider a 3-2-1 backup rule if losing any of it is devastating for your particular use case.

Whatever backup solution you employ, I would also highly recommend frequently making and storing restorable full disk images of the disk where you installed your OS. For that I use clonezilla, although this approach leads to service interruptions; however, for personal, self-hosted affairs, some downtime for general cleanup and maintenance should be acceptable. The main advantage of this approach is that it serves as the big eraser of mistakes that backups can be, while also allowing you to transfer said installations between disks and even machines. Currently I use rsync to automate a daily and weekly backup through cron jobs, and pair it with making a full image of my disk with clonezilla whenever I have to power off or reboot the server. Since I rsync to a different disk than the one that contains the OS, I can safely restore a couple weeks old image and then sync my files back as needed with the daily or weekly backup in case I need to.

Now, my jellyfin server is much younger, starting out as a laptop in 2021 and currently being hosted on a previous gaming PC I used. That's also running Debian and I successfully upgraded it from Debian 11 to 12 and it went just fine. My Jellyfin installation remained intact and functional. Again, that was my experience with Debian instead of Ubuntu, so I can't tell you how Ubuntu handles version upgrades and if it's better to reinstall. Ultimately, whether to reinstall or upgrade will depend on what you prefer. Installing from scratch will be more involved in having to set up many things again, but will give you a fresh start. Upgrading will be likely more streamlined provided nothing goes wrong, but you will need to handle any potential conflicts, merge config files changes as is convenient and deal with obsolete/loose files and packages (at least on Debian).

[tmsrxzar]

if we're talking hosted services then simply maintaining server mirrors can keep downtime to 0
main server goes off for maintenance, mirrors take over, clients are none the wiser anything ever happened

i also use debian so 'my experience' is reflective of using debian

backups should go without saying

when i do a reinstall it's usually 2 years old so software lint is more prevalent (old packages, configs, logs)
last one stayed on debian bullseye from shortly after it was the new stable up until bookworm was
https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye

[tf7300]

Thank you to everyone for your input. The release upgrade to 22.04.3 went flawlessly. I was prepared to do a complete reinstall if it went off the rails. Thank you again.