Upgrade of i-doit Virtual Eval Appliance to Debian GNU/Linux 9 "Stretch"#

Besides the maintenance of i-doit you also have to keep the regular maintenance of the operating system in mind. This article explains the upgrade of Debian GNU/Linux in version 8 "Jessie" to version 9 "Stretch". It takes just a few steps and the i-doit Eval Virtual Appliance will be up to date.

Requirements#

Before upgrading, you have to consider the following:

• The upgrade only describes the i-doit Virtual Eval Appliance in Version 1.2.x.
• We assume that no changes of the system were carried out (except updates). We are not responsible for subsequent changes.
• There has to be enough available memory. The update requires approximately 1 GByte free memory.

Tips#

You also should pay attention to the following issues before an upgrade:

• Do you have backups?
• You shoud inform i-doit users before downtime.
• Automatisms, cronjobs and external access should be stopped during the upgrade.

You can read many additional hints regarding the upgrade of the operating system provided by the Debian Community.

Preparing the Upgrade#

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

Then we carry out updates:

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sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt clean

Afterwards, the system needs to be rebooted. Because of an error the Linux kernel has to be up to date:

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sudo systemctl reboot

After the restart, we connect again via SSH and activate the shell in the menu to ensure that version 8.8 is used:

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cat /etc/debian_release

If this is not the case, the upgrade will fail.
As a precautionary measure you should stop the webserver so that i-doit is not activated in the meantime:

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sudo systemctl stop apache2.service

Now everything is prepared for the upgrade.

Performing the Upgrade#

Now the sources for the distribution packages are adapted:

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sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

The following line is supplemented at the end:

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

All previous lines are commented out; a # is used as a prefix for each line.
Then all package sources are updated and a package upgrade is carried out:

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sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

For the last command some user interactions are required:

1. Answer the question Restart services during package upgrades without asking? with "Yes".
2. Answer the question regarding the overwriting of Configuration file '/etc/issue' with N.
3. Answer the question regarding the overwriting of Configuration file '/etc/issue.net' with N as well.

Now the actual upgrade of the packages to new versions is carried out:

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sudo apt dist-upgrade

In order to activate the new Linux kernel the system is restarted:

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sudo systemctl reboot

Thus the upgrade to version 9 is completed.

Follow-up#

After the restart we connect to the system again vai SSH and activate the shell in the menu.
Now we clear up the distribution packages:

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sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt clean

Then Apache Webserver and PHP have to be adapted as PHP 7.0 instead of PHP 5.6 is provided:

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sudo cp /etc/php5/mods-available/i-doit.ini /etc/php/7.0/mods-available/
sudo phpenmod -v 7.0 i-doit
sudo apt-get purge libapache2-mod-php5 php5
sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php php php-bcmath php-cli php-common php-curl php-gd php-imagick php-json php-ldap php-mcrypt php-memcached php-mysql php-pgsql php-xml php-zip
sudo a2enmod php7.0
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

Changes to the configuration files are not necessary.
Also the DBMS MariaDB has to be adapted:

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sudo mv /etc/mysql/conf.d/i-doit.cnf /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/99-i-doit.cnf
sudo systemctl restart mysql.service

To guarantee the correct function of the welcome screen and the menu you have to modify some lines:

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sudo nano /usr/local/bin/appliance_getip.sh

The contents is replaced by the following:

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#!/bin/bash
/bin/hostname -I | awk -F: '{ print "                                "$1 }'

Also:

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sudo nano /usr/local/bin/get-ip-address

Contents:

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#!/bin/bash
echo "                                         /bin/hostname -I"

And finally the version number of the appliance:

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

Contents:

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APPLIANCE_VERSION="1.3.0"

Now also the follow-up works are completed. You can now restart all automatisms. The downtime is over and users can work with i-doit as usual.