Upgrading Lenny to Squeeze on Rackspace Cloud
Debian 5 (Lenny) is now out of support it will not be receiving any more security or bug fix updates, meaning an upgrade to 6 (Squeeze) is required. The procedure is reasonably simple, however if you are using Lenny on a Rackspace Cloud server, you will get an error relating to "dependency based startup". Furthermore, if you are using MySQL 5, you will need to upgrade that to 5.1 and this itself has a pitfall if you have based your config on the stock my.cnf. Below is the procedure for upgrading Debian Lenny to Squeeze on Rackspace Cloud with MySQL installed.
Some of the following steps may not be strictly necessary, but we have run this upgrade on multiple servers and with only a few minutes downtime on each. All commands are run as root to save time.
Preparation
If you have any additional packages that are no longer needed, now is a good time to remove them:
apt-get autoremoveThen add the latest keys to your apt:
apt-get install debian-archive-keyring -ywget https://ftp-master.debian.org/keys/archive-key-6.0.asc && apt-key add archive-key-6.0.asc
You'll need to "fix" the Rackspace Nova Agent to work with Squeeze, open '/etc/init.d/nova-agent' with your chosen editor and insert the following after the line '# pidfile: /var/run/nova-agent.pid':
# LSB style init header:#### BEGIN INIT INFO# Provides: Nova-Agent# Required-Start: $remote_fs $syslog# Required-Stop: $remote_fs $syslog# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5# Default-Stop: 0 1 6# Short-Description: Start nova-agent at boot time# Description: nova-agent is a guest agent for OpenStack nova.### END INIT INFO
Next update your apt sources to match the new version of debian, again with your chosen editor open '/etc/apt/sources.list' and change any mentions of 'lenny' to 'squeeze'. Here is an example sources.list, change the localised sources to somewhere nearer you:
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze main
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze maindeb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates maindeb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main
# squeeze-updates, previously known as 'volatile'deb
http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates maindeb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main
Run the distribution upgrade
We're now into the meat of the process, this should be fairly painless. Update your apt to use the new sources you just set, do another package cleanup just in case and prepare for the upgrade:
apt-get updateapt-get autoremoveapt-get install apt dpkgapt-get install locales
Now run the full upgrade, this will take some time and ask you a few questions, unless you have a specific reason not to, accept the defaults.
apt-get dist-upgradeThis will have updated you to Squeeze, but your MySQL install will likely not work, so we need to upgrade to 5.1, however in Oracle's infinite wisdom, they have made a parameter in the 5.0 default config cause your server not to start. With your editor open '/etc/mysql/my.cnf' and look for the line 'skip-bdb' and either comment out or remove entirely. Not run the upgrade to 5.1:
apt-get install mysql-server-5.1All done
That should be it and you are now running MySQL 5.1 and Debian 6. In our tests, the whole process took around 13-15 minutes with only 8 of those having the MySQL server down.
clever girl