Score:0

risks upgrading Linux Lightsail instance

bz flag

Should there be something to worry about when upgrading Linux Lightsail instance with Gitlab installed on it?

I'm looking to upgrade our business Gitlab running on AWS Lightsail instance from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS as its old and ugly. Honestly this is my first time I'm doing an upgrade so I followed some information and I guess there shouldn't be any hitch.

So what's my plan:

Create snapshot

apt update and apt upgrade

Disable ufw temporary or open TCP port # 1022 for safety reasons if port ssh failed during updates, then reboot

Upgrade the operating system to the latest release (it should be 18.04 now, right?)

reboot, then repeat upgrade to 20.04

What's my question here is as I've never done upgrading is that I worry if there could be anything I should be worried about.

I mean - all services installed (gitlab, etc) shouldn't be touched in process of Linux server upgrade, right?

Gitlab should be up and running just after reboot if everything upgrades smoothly?

EDIT: This is 2nd month of my Linux and cloud journey so this is definitely a dumb question but need to start somewhere (without test env), huh?

Score:0
it flag

OK I will try to be gentle here.

First and foremost - please do not do this experiment on a production system.

I'm not Ubuntu expert but counting on my Debian experience the difference between Ubuntu16. 04 and Ubuntu20. 04 is (I assume) huge..

What could go wrong? Many things and just to name the few:

  • shared libraries needed by gitlab could be incompatible with gitlab after Ubuntu upgrade
  • init scripts from initd to systemd switch may need adjustments
  • files, directories and system utilities could change during the OS upgrade making gitlab unable to start

Gitlab has quite a nice backup package that backs up all the data and most of the configuration so starting a fresh Ubuntu20. 04 with fresh Gitlab install and just restoring the backup could be feasible way to migrate to new Ubuntu system.

If you however need to upgrade in-place I suggest that you clone your prod environment (consult with Gitlab application admin if doing a VM clone may create problems in your setup) and try your proposed solution on a non-productive environment. Test if everything went as expected and then only proceed with PROD upgrade...

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