Skip to content

Upgrade of the i-doit Virtual Eval Appliance to Debian GNU/Linux 10 "Buster"#

In addition to the maintenance of i-doit, the maintenance of the underlying operating system should not be ignored. We describe the upgrade from Debian GNU/Linux in version 9 "Stretch" to 10 "Buster". In some steps the i-doit Eval Virtual Appliance is up to date.

Why is it worth the effort to upgrade the operating system to the latest version? There are very good reasons:

  1. The IT documentation contains sensitive data that must be protected. This can only be guaranteed if all system components are up to date.
  2. The switch from PHP 7.0 to 7.3 brings a measurable performance boost.

Prerequisites#

Some things need to be considered before upgrading:

  • The upgrade only describes the i-doit Virtual Eval Appliance version 1.3.x.
  • It is assumed that no changes (except updates) have been made to the system. Subsequent changes are not our responsibility.
  • Sufficient free memory is available. In the meantime, the update requires approx. 1 GByte of memory.

To note when using VirtualBox

Select the appropriate virtual machine and open the machine configuration. Under the System tab, the checkbox for Hardware Clock in UTC must be activated. Otherwise the SQL server has a problem with the time setting.

Tips#

Furthermore the following should be considered before an upgrade:

  • Backups should be available.
  • Users of i-doit should be informed before the downtime.
  • Automatisms, cronjobs and external access should be stopped for the duration of the upgrade.

The Debian Community provides many more hints for upgrading the operating system.

Prepare Upgrade#

We connect via SSH and call the menu item 0 Launch Shell.

Afterwards we carry out updates:

1
2
3
4
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt clean

The system must then be restarted. Due to a bug, the Linux kernel must be up to date:

1
sudo systemctl reboot

After the restart we connect again via SSH and call the shell in the menu. Now we make sure that version 9.x is in use:

1
cat /etc/debian_release

If this is not the case, the upgrade will fail.

As a precaution, the web server should be stopped so that i-doit is not called in the meantime:

1
sudo systemctl stop apache2.service

Thus everything is prepared for the upgrade.

Upgrade#

The sources for the distribution packages are now adjusted:

1
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

The following line is added at the end:sudo cp /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/i-doit.ini /etc/php/7.3/mods-available sudo phpenmod -v 7.3 i-doit sudo apt install php7.3-bcmath php7.3-cli php7.3-common php7.3-curl php7.3-gd php7.3-imagick php7.3-json php7.3-ldap php7.3-memcached php7.3-mysql php7.3-pgsql php7.3-xml php7.3-zip sudo a2dismod php7.0 sudo a2enmod php7.3 sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main

deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian buster main contrib

deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian buster main contrib

All previous lines are commented out. Each line is preceded by a #.

Then the package sources are updated and the packages are updated:

1
2
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

The last command requires multiple user interactions:

  1. The question Restart services during package upgrades without asking? have to be answered "Yes".
  2. Overwriting Configuration file '/etc/issue' have to be answered with N.
  3. Overwriting Configuration file '/etc/issue.net' have to be answered with N.

Now follows the actual upgrade of the packages to new versions:

1
sudo apt dist-upgrade

So that the new Linux kernel becomes active, we restart the system:

1
sudo systemctl reboot

The upgrade to version 10 "Buster" is now complete.

Follow-up#

After the reboot we connect to the system via SSH again and call the shell in the menu.

First we clean up the distribution packages:

1
2
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt clean

Now we have to adapt the Apache webserver and PHP, because instead of PHP 7.0 now 7.3 is included:

1
2
3
4
5
6
sudo cp /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/i-doit.ini /etc/php/7.3/mods-available
sudo phpenmod -v 7.3 i-doit
sudo apt install php7.3-bcmath php7.3-cli php7.3-common php7.3-curl php7.3-gd php7.3-imagick php7.3-json php7.3-ldap php7.3-memcached php7.3-mysql php7.3-pgsql php7.3-xml php7.3-zip
sudo a2dismod php7.0
sudo a2enmod php7.3
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

And last but not least the version number of the appliance:

1
sudo nano /etc/i-doit/appliance.conf

Content:

1
APPLIANCE_VERSION="1.3.1"

This also concludes the postprocessing. Now all automatisms can be started again. The downtime is finished and i-doit can be called again by the users as usual.