My Ubuntu distro has reached end of life. What's the safest way to upgrade in my situation?
I am no longer able to apt-update since my distro is no longer supported.
I'm aware that I shouldn't try to upgrade this Linode itself and that the best way to go about this is to start up a new Linode and transfer my files over. I've also seen that I can use something like FileZilla (hopefully WINSCP too?) to transfer my files.
What I'm wondering is:
- Since I have backups of my current server, can I restore these to the new server, or will it not work since it is a different distribution?
- Once my files have been transferred to the new server, what else can I expect to have to do? Will I have to redo all my file permissions?
- Do I have the option to keep my current IP?
1 Reply
hdiep
Linode Staff
We have a guide that can walk you through on how to perform a clean install here and a community post that outlines the next steps on how you can transfer your files.
Your backup should work if you were to restore it onto a new server. However, it'll contain your previous distribution version which would defeat the purpose of a clean install.
You can use a utility like FileZilla or SCP to copy over your application data. Once your files have been transferred to a new server, you may need to manually install any required packages. I personally haven't tested that out myself, so it may be worth while to see if the file permissions carry over as well.
If you'd like to keep your current IP, you can utilize our IP transfer feature to move or swap IP addresses. We have a guide that can walk you through on how to achieve this and a community post that also covers on how to do this with our Linode API.
I hope this helps!