How to in-place upgrade from openSUSE 15.3 to 15.4

I’ve been writing these “Readers Digest” versions of the official Opensuse upgrades procedures for a looong time (here are a couple of my past ones: 11.1, 11.2, 11.4, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 13.1, 13.2, 42.1, 42.2, 42.3, 15.0, 15.1, and 15.2)… And I always thought I had to do this; because in the past, the official distribution upgrade guide wasn’t as great as it could have been.

So when it came time for upgrading in-place from openSuse 15.3 to 15.4, I took another hard look at the opensuse.org site doc. And at this point I think I think it’s improved so much over the years that it’s now basically to the point that there’s nothing really I can do to make it more clearer that it already is:

https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade

So, instead, I’ll just offer a couple tips or minor things I did differently, which mostly aren’t related to the upgrade, but to the approach.

And please… as always, if you don’t know what you’re doing, please don’t do this; get some help. Now, let’s get to it:

#
# Run the following as the root user, or insert all your sudo commands if you like
# Tip: Make a vm snapshot before you proceed!
# Tip: Use "screen" to run the dup, if you need to reconnect later, "screen -r"
screen
# Tip: Ensure you have space to do an upgrade (the /boot requires more space these days)! 
df -h
# Tip: Check your version, to know what your upgrading from and to: 
more /etc/SUSE-brand
more /etc/os-release
# Now, step back from the console, and go visit the official guide, and follow the steps there:
# https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:System_upgrade
# (optional) And because I'm super-cautious, because in the past on some of my systems grub did not get configured, I run this before restarting:
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
# And reboot (and watch from a console)...
init 6

My advice is to make sure you have multiple terminal sessions during the upgrade, in case something goes a little strange, and make sure you have space for the kernel and all the files (especially if you have small /boot partitions).

Again, thanks to the folks at Suse who’ve worked hard to improve the upgrade process and to make the guide(s) more clear and simple.

Cool! Happy upgrading…

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