Migrate from MX 19 to MX 23?

[Solon]

Here's my quick info:

Code: Select all

System:    Kernel: 5.10.0-5mx-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-5mx-amd64 root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.14.5 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 7 dm: SDDM Distro: MX-19.4_kde_x64 patito feo March 31  2021 
           base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: TOSHIBA product: Satellite P770 v: PSBY1U-009005 serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 
           serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: TOSHIBA model: PHRAA v: 1.00 serial: <filter> BIOS: TOSHIBA v: 2.20 date: 10/30/2012 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT1 charge: 0% condition: 7.1/48.6 Wh (14.6%) volts: 7.2 min: 10.8 model: COMPAL PABAS0241231 type: Li-ion 
           serial: <filter> status: Unknown 
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core i5-2410M bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Sandy Bridge family: 6 model-id: 2A (42) 
           stepping: 7 microcode: 2F cache: L2: 3 MiB 
           flags: avx lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 18358 
           Speed: 1001 MHz min/max: 800/2900 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1001 2: 1145 3: 966 4: 1001 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
           Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
           Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
           Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics vendor: Toshiba driver: i915 v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:0116 class-ID: 0300 
           Device-2: Alcor Micro type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-1.4:3 chip-ID: 058f:b003 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter> 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.10 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
           display-ID: :0 screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1600x900 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 423x238mm (16.7x9.4") s-diag: 485mm (19.1") 
           Monitor-1: LVDS-1 res: 1600x900 hz: 60 dpi: 106 size: 382x215mm (15.0x8.5") diag: 438mm (17.3") 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 3000 (SNB GT2) v: 3.3 Mesa 20.3.5 compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Definition Audio vendor: Toshiba driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 00:1b.0 chip-ID: 8086:1c20 class-ID: 0403 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.10.0-5mx-amd64 running: yes 
           Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 12.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Toshiba driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 
           bus-ID: 02:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Lite-On driver: ath9k v: kernel modules: wl 
           port: e000 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 168c:002b class-ID: 0280 
           IF: wlan0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 596.17 GiB used: 47.3 GiB (7.9%) 
           SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
           ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Hitachi model: HTS547564A9E384 size: 596.17 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B 
           logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s type: HDD rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> rev: A60B scheme: MBR 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 19.92 GiB size: 19.48 GiB (97.80%) used: 11.14 GiB (57.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6 maj-min: 8:6 
           ID-2: /home raw-size: 194.15 GiB size: 190.1 GiB (97.91%) used: 36.16 GiB (19.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda7 
           maj-min: 8:7 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 12.21 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 dev: /dev/sda5 maj-min: 8:5 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 53.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     Packages: 2650 note: see --pkg apt: 2645 lib: 1543 flatpak: 5 
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-earth-pro.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/ stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ buster main non-free
           2: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ buster ahs
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 213 Uptime: 14m wakeups: 2 Memory: 5.72 GiB used: 1.5 GiB (26.2%) Init: SysVinit v: 2.93 runlevel: 5 
           default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8 Shell: quick-system-in default: Bash v: 5.0.3 
           running-in: quick-system-in inxi: 3.3.06 

I have two computers, this is my older one running MX 19.4 dual boot with Win 7. On my newer computer, I dual boot MX 21 (use all the time) with Win 11 (never!).

This may be a silly question, but on this older computer, can I simply 'migrate' from MX 19 directly to MX 23, and bypass MX 21 completely?

I do not see why not... but I'm not a power user of Linux, and you know what they say about what happens when you 'assume' something!

P.S. Searching the Forum for: MX 19 Support, MX 19 Expire, MX 19 End, MX 19 migrate to MX 23 -- were all dead-ends! Nothing useful. I finally had to go to the "Migration" page and eventually found the "Previous Releases" page, which tells me what i wanted to know.

Suggestion 1: As we get closer to the EOL of MX 19 (June of 2024), the Forum Gods might want to stick a note somewhere mentioning what it means, with dates, a link, etc. that the: End of MX 19 is nigh!

Suggestion 2: On the Migration page, you might want, under the MX 19 to MX 21 section, to ADD a new paragraph: MX 19 to MX 23; to the effect that MX 19 users can bypass MX 21 and migrate directly to MX 23 (if that is indeed possible!).

[chrispop99]

Migrating between versions of MX Linux is not officially supported. The migration page suggests it should only be done by advanced users:

DISCLAIMER: This how-to is for the benefit of advanced users who are comfortable with the command line and willing to research and fix things if things go wrong, it’s not guaranteed to work and is not supported in any way by the dev team. As always, when upgrading from a Debian base to another one a clean install is the easiest procedure that provides a fresh and complete configuration. The upgrade might not work seamlessly, especially if you mixed and matched packages from Testing, Backports, and other unofficial repos.

Personal experience, and that of members of the Facebook group, suggests about a 50% success rate. That is when going from one version to the next. To jump two steps in one go is completely untested. If you decide to risk it, I would advise doing it in two steps - MX-19 to MX-21, then MX-21 to MX-23.

Chris

[asqwerth]

Might be safer to do a fresh install (ie, writing over your current mx19 partition) but with the custom setting to reuse/preserve your /home, as listed below in the first part of the stated webpage:

https://mxlinux.org/migration/

You can follow the instructions for the MX21 to MX23 section, just make sure you install user-installed-packages from within mx19 first and save the list of your installed packages somewhere safe.

However, please note that since you are jumping 2 Debian releases and to a newer XFCE version, so expect some of the configs (hidden dot files in /home) -- esp. those that are xfce-related -- to not work properly and make your desktop look wonky. So you may need to subsequently dig into your dot files and perhaps remove some of your old config files so that the system will generate fresh default configs for those you have removed.

No guarantee that you won't need to subsequently sort some issues out manually, but it's probably safer than an in-place manual upgrade of packages from MX19 to MX23.

Always backup all your data and config settings first!

[Eadwine Rose]

Fresh install for the win. Remember that you get to keep the pieces when you mess it up. You're VERY lucky people here are crazy enough to help you out if you do, but.. yeah.. experienced users only.

Best strategy: backup what you have, fresh install, put the configs back into the new install.

[baldyeti]

What I would try:

• run user-installed-programs tool from MX19, save its output
• install MX23 while preserving your HOME
• from MX23, use user-installed-programs feeding it with the list generated at step 1 (note this probably will only add programs that came from the standard repo, not any "exotic" additions (nor even programs from the MX test repo IIRC)

[Charlie Brown]

That's it.

Also "much more" simpler, faster, cleaner in all aspects. :)

[chrispop99]

What I would try:

• from MX23, use user-installed-programs feeding it with the list generated at step 1 (note this probably will only add programs that came from the standard repo, not any "exotic" additions (nor even programs from the MX test repo IIRC)

The user-installed-programs utility generates a text file if anything that it is unable to install from standard repos. This at least lets you know what else you need to add manually.

Chris

[MXRobo]

Facebook group, suggests about a 50% success rate.

And 0% success rate when done incorrectly.
=====================================

This so called "memory" is really faint in my mind, but I thought that I read a post on this forum stating that it was NOT possible to upgrade from MX19 to MX23, or at least directly from MX19 to MX23. I thought it was the former, but I could be incorrect on both, maybe search the forum – again, not really sure what I read.
HTDH - hope this doesn't hinder

UPI doesn't include Flatpaks, Appimages, External DLs, etc. - in addition to Test and Backports Repo IIRC.

++EDIT

The user-installed-programs utility generates a text file if anything that it is unable to install from standard repos. This at least lets you know what else you need to add manually.

I'm a little confused by this comment. I thought that it WOULD install the programs from MX-23 (or 21). Am I missing something about enabling specific repos or that it usually doesn't work - ??????
Thanks!

[asqwerth]

++EDIT

The user-installed-programs utility generates a text file if anything that it is unable to install from standard repos. This at least lets you know what else you need to add manually.

I'm a little confused by this comment. I thought that it WOULD install the programs from MX-23 (or 21). Am I missing something about enabling specific repos or that it usually doesn't work - ??????
Thanks!

Basically, UIP will install anything in the first-generated list that is also found in the newer Debian/MX's standard repos. Whatever it can't install (eg Google chrome since that is a proprietary 3rd party package MX installs via special routine from MXPI "popular apps") but which was from the UIP-generated list, will show up in a display pane/window in the UIP app. You can then save this "not-found" list in a separate text file so you can sort it out manually later.

[MXRobo]

OK, I asked because I thought that I may have been missing something or understood.
Before asking, I wouldn't have been surprised if it didn't include proprietary apps and I would check against the list anyway - so nice little app.
Thanks asqwerth!