Upgrade to Debian 13 and Virtualmin Compatibility

Virtualmin
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| SYSTEM INFORMATION||
|------------------------------
| Debian 12
| Webmin 2.621
| Virtualmin 8.0.1 GPL
| Apache versione 2.4.66

Good morning,

Debian 12 is currently installed on the server.
After waiting a few months to avoid a premature upgrade, I am now considering whether it would be appropriate to proceed with the upgrade to Debian 13.

I would therefore like to ask whether the Virtualmin control panel is fully compatible and stable on Debian 13, or if you recommend waiting a bit longer before performing the upgrade.

I look forward to your kind advice or recommendation on this matter.

Thank you for your availability.

Kind regards,
Mimmo

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See

In a nutshell, Debian 13 is a grade A supported OS at the moment.

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ā€˜Upgrade in placeā€™ is not the recommended method anymore. At least thatā€™s my take. Given you can rent a VS by the hour now days it is suggested you spin up a new and then migrate. If it goes well, update the server and migrate back. Best hedge against down time if this is an issue for you.

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I know this is the Virtualmin staffā€™s take on it, but I am running Ubuntu and it has an in in-place upgrade system. Why is it unsafe to use this?

I understand that if you are like 10 version behind then using an in-place upgrade is probably not wise.

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Obviously, you have never had this fail on an important production server. Very nice. For those of us who have had an in place upgrade bork an important server? Not so nice. I know things change that donā€™t always get caught in testing. This is especially true for software that has itsā€™ fingers in lots of different things.

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I donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever said it is ā€œunsafeā€. But, a migration is safer.

And, it definitely requires more downtime, and is more likely to require manual interventions (which may or may not be easy for you), than a migration to a new server with the new OS.

A migration can be done with a few minutes of downtime, usually, because the old system can remain in service. An in-place upgrade is likely to end up being a couple of hours, assuming everything goes well.

Given how easy spinning up new VMs is, itā€™s just easier for most people to migrate rather than upgrade in place. It isnā€™t a requirement, Iā€™m not telling you what to do, Iā€™m just trying to make it as easy as possible and as resistant to problems as possible. An expert can handle an in-place upgrade just fine, Iā€™m sure.

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the exceptional backup system in virtualmin makes migration simple. what i do is make a full backup of all configurations, accounts into one file..i then have the server reloaded from scratch with the new os..then i install the new virt version. you then use the backup system to restore everything..no need for a second server..you can migrate using the same machine if you have a good hostā€¦:slight_smile:

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This is the explanation I needed and sort of expected.

Thanks

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I think that a list of what settings are backed up and migrated is needed, this will also indicate if the webmin backup is needed for a correct migration of servers while trying to keep the new server as close to the old one without have to start customisations from scratch.

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