I have a question regarding this upgrade. I have an Ubuntu 18.04 server. I ran the normal updates and I noticed that webmin and virtualmin were updated. My Virtualmin dashboard is now displaying this message:
Warning - Your system is actually running Ubuntu Linux version 18.04.5.
Am I to assume that upgrading the Ubuntu distribution will not disrupt my Virtualmin setup? I have several clients’ domains hosted on the server, so I am somewhat reticent to just go ahead without some sort of reassurance from the developers. I have full system backups but I would prefer not to have to use them to restore a live system.
You already upgraded! That message is not offering to upgrade Ubuntu to 18.04.5. It is saying it detected that you upgrade to 18.04.5 and is offering to update its metadata about the running OS.
Virtualmin will never offer to do a major system version upgrade (i.e. you can’t do dist-upgrade from the software packages page in Virtualmin), but minor versions appear in the usual operating system update mechanism (which Virtualmin will show you, but does not control or take responsibility for…we aren’t your package manager or your OS).
Thanks for your reply Joe. I don’t think I made myself clear. I am asking whether it is safe to do a distribution upgrade to 20.04 without damaging my clients’ setups. Perhaps I am being too timid about the whole thing. I have been running Virtualmin very happily on 18.04 for quite a long time. I am looking forward to using Ubuntu server 20.04 because the version of postfix supports SNI.
Oh! No, you’re not being too timid. Major version upgrades are major; they don’t promise to not break backward compatibility when the major version changes. You need to plan a full day for it, just in case something goes wrong. And, you should expect minor issues. There are changes between the versions that may cause confusion. PHP versions change, for instance…might break some of your apps if you’re running old ones. Do a little research and make a checklist of things that you’ll need to do after the upgrade, if anything comes up during your research.
That said, it is reasonably safe to do an Ubuntu upgrade in place using dist-upgrade. Virtualmin won’t mind the change, generally speaking and will detect most of the changes automatically. Your web apps may be a different matter.
Thank you. I am reassured! I think I should be able to deal with the issues that may arise. I think that perhaps I should do it on Sunday when things are quieter. I don’t envisage any major issues with web apps since the websites are mostly Wordpress or straight HTML5. As a precautionary measure, I shall make sure that I have a full mirror of the system available in case something goes seriously awry. Once again, thank you for your considerate reply.