An Idea for upgrading an installed version of Linux, gracefully.

Here is a whole new idea as to how to upgrade an installed version of Linux, over its life-time, without having to begin from scratch each time or to upgrade and risk balking the entire installation.

I have posted this on the Klikit-Linux forums here.

Hi All,

As part of the quest to make updating files more efficient, I have been on the lookout for ways to improve the distribution of ISO files. I think I have found a clue.

'gzip --rsyncable' to make compressed files rsyncable

This is quite technical, but important, in that, by using this switch when compressing files, rsync [and by analogy, I suspect zsync] is able to find identical parts within the compressed file more easily, saving more on the downloading process. Since this has an insignificant overhead in the compression phase but can save hugely in the download phase, I think it needs to be known and used wherever possible.

The link I have included above is a Google search as the information is a bit scattered. However I found that Debian and Ubuntu are using this method on both their installation LiveCD ISOs and the supplementary ISOs.

Paul

[Quoted the above post for archive purposes. Some repetition follows, sorry.]

As part of the quest to make updating files more efficient, I have been on the lookout for ways to improve the distribution of ISO files. I think I have found a clue.

'gzip --rsyncable' to make compressed files rsyncable

This is quite technical, but important, in that, by using this switch when compressing files, rsync [and by analogy, I suspect zsync] is able to find identical parts within the compressed file more easily, saving more on the downloading process. Since this has an insignificant overhead in the compression phase but can save hugely in the download phase, I think it needs to be known and used wherever possible.

The link I have included above is a Google search as the information is a bit scattered. However I found that Debian and Ubuntu are using this method on both their installation LiveCD ISOs and the supplementary ISOs.

Another innovation I would like to see, would be to have the installation file provided as a compressed zsync file that can more easily be updated with the zsync application. This would make it easy to upgrade the whole system with the minimum of downloading required.

Then, have the installer install from that updated file without the need to burn it to CD or DVD. That would eliminate quite a lot of work and potential errors. [This is already done for installation to USB devices, for example.]

These changes, combined with cosbear's three partition installation ['/', '/home' and '/Data'], would make it possible to quickly and efficiently upgrade a system to the latest, fully consistent state, without losing any configurations from the 'home' folder or potential loss of data.

That way, anyone could upgrade their entire system without the risks associated with doing so with the existing methods that use APT, where there is always the possibility of ending up with an unstable installation.This method would always produce a completely stable system, just like a fresh installation.

The latest installation file would be kept until the next upgrade, then deleted to conserve space. Only changed files would need to be downloaded, but the target installation file would always be the one being distributed. Additional applications not included in the main distribution would be saved using APTonCD, reinstalled after the main installation, and all dependencies for those would be handled by APT, perhaps also utilising deborphan [or better, debfoster] to manage the application set.