Thank you for the links to the Virtualmin documentation.
I’m looking for some confirmation if the steps I outlined above are the steps to take.
There is a comment from @Joe in the link I posted that says a migration can be done in a few minutes. Whereas I imagine hours of downtime to install the new Debian 13 os and reinstall the programs.
I have a basic knowledge - not very comprehensive at all. And I don’t deal with the server on a daily basis nor on a professional level. I am the one maintaining it.
So when some change needs to happen or some glitch occurs, after searching on the various forums and such for an answer and trying some suggestions, the efforts I’ve spent to resolve the problem may not have bore any fruit. Then I post asking for further help. Especially with something that involves shutting down the system and installing a new system.
I’m asking whether the steps I’ve outlined above are indeed the steps to take to change from a Debian 12 system running Virtualmin to a Debian 13 system running Virtualmin with the previous user data and applications that was running on the Debian 12 system.
That is why I replied with official instructions form the people that create webmin/virtualmin
There is no easy way to state that in any server migration it will 100% work easy and go as planned.
If you really need professional help there are many here that offer services such as server migration.
Please what ever you do , do not move forward if you believe that your skills cannot accomplish this
Thank you for your suggestion and your time that you’ve taken to respond to my post.
Most likely I will go ahead and install Debian 13 myself. I’ll try the steps that I’ve outlined above unless someone else chimes in with further suggestions.
sure, I migrated from Debian 12 to 13 using the links I provided to you.
Please invest the time to study them before you attempt any migration.
I know you are looking for easy answer but reality is there is not one and you have to put time in to study what I posted and even use VM environments to test.
Thanks. Yes, now that I think about it, I have looked the migration steps before and did migrate from one server before a new one.
If I recall correctly, I think that there were some issues with the new ip address and I had to manually change some Virtualmin settings to reflect the new ip address.
You are welcome.
Issues with the IP addresses just depends on how your infrastructure is
I had no Issues with IP’s when migrating
That includes 2 servers from Rocky Linux 9.x to 10.x and Debian 12 to Debian 13
backed up relevent domain using the old Virtualmin panel (and not any Virtualmin commands)
loaded Debian 13
reinstalled Virtualmin
restored domain backup using the new Virtualmin panel
I subsequently found that:
the ipv6 address wasn’t setup so I have to manually make change /etc/network/interfaces and restart networking
the new system couldn’t connect to the wordpress site so I had to issue manual mysql commands to create the relevent user with the old password and grant it access to the relevent Wordpress database.
Were there some steps that I omitted that could have prevented the above 2 manual interventions?