Restoring Ubuntu backups to Debian

Virtualmin
1

For quite some time now, I’m planning to move away from Ubuntu. It more and more bothers me with questionable stuff (snap) and their LTS update cycle is too long IMHO. Hence, I picked Debian as my new prod environment.

Before I switch, I want to learn if there are any known pitfalls restoring Ubuntu *min backups on a fresh Debian system.

The challenge is that the move is planned to happen on the very same VPS, hence I can’t afford to just give it a shot only to figure that I messed up risking an unacceptable period of downtime.

I can’t set-up a VPS in parallel to try (as described here).

Does someone have hands-on experience restoring a Ubuntu backup to Debian?

2

In Debian 12 on Virtualmin, was there not a feature which was broken? Was it fail2ban or something else?

Virtualmin on Debian 11 works as it should.

3

Good to know, I keep that in mind. What I can tell: Fail2Ban defo broke when I upgraded from 22.04 to 24.04 - among other stuff that had to be fixed.

4

upgrading is not recommended not only by virt by by long time linux admins. i always reinstall when going to a new version like 22.04 to 24.04. this is why i only use LTS versions to reduce the amount of times upgrades are required.

5

Please don’t suggest old versions.

If there’s a bug, we’ll fix it. I’m not aware of any, but I may have missed it.

1 Like
6

We have never said “don’t upgrade”, in general. The only case where we would say “don’t upgrade” it would be because we don’t yet support the version you’re upgrading to, which is not the case here.

7

You perfectly know it’s the best to do. And you shall be able to try. Then it completely depend of your setup.

Personally I always have been on Debian and never get main issue due to it.

8

I also don’t see why. Plenty of good suppliers of cloud hosting services out there some even offer free for a period with a coupon. (sure they all want you to like the service and remain with them as a paying customer but even then a good useable low spec VM is only a few $$ per month) with an easy installation of Virtualmin GPL easy to make a start, then play to convince yourself.

1 Like
9

I have done this migration from ubuntu to debian two years ago out of the same reasons you are mentioning and had no major problems.

10

What were the minor then?

11

There was a problem with fail2ban which got solved by Ilia:

I also restored the VS one by one and not like described in the migration manual.

Make a VM on your desktop or ‘try and error’ on an old laptop. Never do such things on a productive server.

2 Likes
12

Virtual server backups should install on any virtualmin system without issue, if they don’t there is a bit that needs reporting.

I don’t think the restoring of the virtualmin server config should not cause any issue either.

However as mentioned, there is no harm doing test moves and investigations first.

1 Like
13

not only “no harm”. but should be “essential” in any proposal/plan to do any such major upgrade/OS move.

14

Trust me, I did (and still do) testing on a local VM. However, it’s not the same as a “real” VPS, hence informing upfront before making a crucial mistake switching to a different OS.

15

What is the driving force for that?

16

It’s sort of a gut feeling to change strategy. Ubuntu’s based on Debian anyway, Canonical adds stuff I don’t like and am afraid it moves into the wrong direction, i. e. Snaps.

Also, I experienced several hiccups in the past years that led to hour- to day-long outages (not always Ubuntu’s fault, the effin backup solution provided by my ISP didn’t play well with Ubuntu).

I admit it got better since I moved to a new ISP but there’s a lingering feeling that a move to Debian is for the better. I stand corrected if the right reasons hit me but I can’t think of any currently.

2 Likes
17

Ubuntu is much more heavy than debian (It’s more a windows alternative). So while for Gaming it’s really nice at the opposite for a hub it doesn’t seem so strong.

Still He is free to change for whatever He want, it’s not the problem.

18

My personal opinion is the opposite of llia (As often). I would never take ubuntu … Alma maybe but ubuntu for server, according to me, it’s the wrong bet.

More over Ubuntu is a Debian derivated so again for a server and sustainability it’s always better to get the original and not a “Branch”/Derivate.

I always have been on debian and never get a problem which was not My fault.

19

As a loyal Ubuntu user (but am always keeping my mind open so interested here)
I wonder if there are any stats (on here) on the number of issues raised (especially regarding Debian 12 that I have noticed appearing) and re Ubuntu 24!

20

snap can easily be removed from any Ubuntu Server if you are not going to sign up for Ubuntu Pro.
As long as you did not specifically install anything from snap itself. You can use the following commands below.

snap list

sudo systemctl disable snapd.service
sudo systemctl disable snapd.socket
sudo systemctl disable snapd.seeded.service

sudo snap remove lxd
sudo snap remove core18
sudo snap remove core20
sudo snap remove snapd

You remove the snap files in order, from lxd, core, to snapd

Remove any remainder folders after.

sudo rm -rf /var/cache/snapd/

sudo apt autoremove --purge snapd

rm -rf ~/snap

That’s the first I have ever heard of such complaint.

All depends on what you plan to bring over. If it’s just backups of virtualservers? You should be good to go using import. I myself haven’t had any issues with this.

If you are coming over from Ubuntu 22 to Debian 12, I wouldn’t import any config files. Just go over how you had the old server setup and change accordingly. Technically you should never bring any config files over from another distribution.

I use Virtualmin on Ubuntu server 22, 24 and Debian 12 without any issues.
On Debian 12 and some Ubuntu 24 installations you need to get used to using journal for your log reading.

Best of luck!