[slurm-users] Extreme long db upgrade 16.05.6 -> 17.11.3

[Lech Nieroda]

> Upgrading more than 2 releases isn't supported, so I don't believe the 19.05 slurmdbd will have the code in it to upgrade tables from earlier than 17.11.

I haven’t found any mention of this in the upgrade section of the QuickStart guide (see https://slurm.schedmd.com/quickstart_admin.html#upgrade ), is the lack of support described somewhere else?
The guide states:

"Slurm permits upgrades between any two versions whose major release numbers differ by two or less (e.g. 16.05.x or 17.02.x to 17.11.x) without loss of jobs or other state information. State information from older versions will not be recognized and will be discarded, resulting in loss of all running and pending jobs."

Upgrades from older versions are possible but result in the loss of state files. While it is possible, it is not very practical. One would have to make an offline upgrade where the servers and clients are upgraded at the same time, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to communicate.
The code for converting 17.02 and prior versions is present in 19.05pre. 

Kind regards,
Lech