Leapp Before you Fall!
The Leapp utility is a framework for in-place upgrade of operating systems and applications. Currently, Oracle only supports upgrading operating systems from Oracle Linux 7 to Oracle Linux 8 and Oracle Linux 8 to Oracle Linux 9. It doesn’t support any other operating systems or versions. Leapp supports systems running on-premises and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI); it operates in two phases.
Pre-upgrade - checking the system configuration for upgrade.
Upgrade - performing the actual upgrade.
In-place upgrading saves lot of time and cost for organizations. Currently Leapp will only upgrade packages provided by Oracle and not third-party packages. So, if third-party applications are running on the systems, then you should review all requirements carefully before using Leapp.
Systems with features like ISV applications, Oracle Linux Manager, systems registered with ULN, running FIPS mode or SecureBoot are not supported by Leapp. These requirements are same for both OL7 to OL8 & OL8 to OL9 upgrade scenarios. Refer to Oracle documentations for more details.
There are some restrictions around supported kernel upgrades. Oracle Linux x86_64 system not using Brfts file system can be upgraded from OL7/OL8 RHCK to OL8/OL9 RHCK & OL7/OL8 UEK to OL8/OL9 UEK. Oracle Linux x86_64 system using Brfts file system can be upgraded from OL7 RHCK to OL8 UEK & OL7 UEK to OL8 UEK. Oracle Linux x86_64 system using Brfts file system can only be upgraded from OL8 UEK to OL9 UEK. For more details around kernel upgrades refer to Oracle documentations.
To Leapp the system is a straightforward process. Here are main commands you will run to upgrade the system. You should still have to go through system backup, resolve any issue identified during preupgrade check etc.
To install the package,
# yum install -y leapp-upgrade --enablerepo=ol7_leapp,ol7_latest
To run pre-upgrade check,
# leapp preupgrade --oraclelinux
To upgrade the system,
# leapp upgrade --oraclelinux
# reboot
At this point system it’s upgraded, and you can perform any custom post-installation tasks and/or reported during pre-upgrade check. Here is the screenshot of verifications commands
As you’ve noticed that the Leapp process is very simple and valuable when you have to upgrade lot of physical or virtual systems. But at the same time there are quite a few restrictions as we went over here, so it is very critical to evaluate your environment before choosing the upgrade path. Systems running third party application/packages may be a candidate of out-of-place upgrade. You can find Oracle Linux lifetime support policy at https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/elsp-lifetime-069338.pdf.
Mythics provides Technical Account Manager (TAM) services for Oracle Linux to customers. As a customer you also get access to tailored knowledge base that includes topics from various Linux technologies like Leapp, Oracle Linux Automation Manager (OLAM), Migration to Oracle Linux automation etc.