[slurm-users] Debian dist-upgrade?

[Loris Bennett]

Hi Steffen,

Steffen Grunewald <steffen.grunewald at aei.mpg.de> writes:

> Salut Stephane,
>
> On Tue, 2023-01-24 at 15:53:03 +0100, Stephane Vaillant wrote:
>> Le 24/01/2023 à 10:09, Steffen Grunewald a écrit :
>> > Hello,
>> > 
>> > is there anyone using plain Debian with Slurm (as provided by the OS repository),
>> > who might have suggestions for our upgrade from Buster to Bullseye?
>> > Of course we'd like to keep the database (user definitions and job history), but
>> > We're now running version 18.08.5.2 (Buster's version) while Bullseye comes with
>> > 20.11.x, which is beyond the 2-version upgrade range. Is there hope (and how to
>> > verify that) that a dist-upgrade would do the right thing?
>> 
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I've done an upgrade from Debian 7 (slurm 2.3.4) to Debian 8 (slurm
>> 14.03.9).
>
> I don't remember when the naming scheme was changed... but apparently it took you
> two intermediate stages:
>
>>  - download and compile an intermediary version (2.4.5)
>>  - redo the same for another intermediary version (2.6.9)
>>  - finally install slurm from Debian 8 (14.03.9)
> [...]
>> Preparing the upgrade procedure on an experimental setup was time consuming
>> but rewarding.
>
>
> If this slurmdbd machine was the only thing I'd have to care about I might
> consider going the same way, but...
> ... basically you're saying that for Deb 7->8 no smooth dist-upgrade was
> possible. Given that my upgrade path will be 10->11, I'm still hoping that
> this might be easier.
> My user base is small, and the history isn't too valuable, so I might as
> well start from scratch.

Could you create/find a deb-package for a Slurm 19.x version to use as
an intermediate?  Never having built such a package, I don't now how
much trouble that would be.

However, Building RPMs I do know is easy, so you could also dump your
database, find a (virtual) machine running some appropriate RedHat-like
OS, create the RPMs for the three versions of Slurm you need, install
the first one, import your database and then do the updates.  Finally
you can dump the database again and import it on your Debian 11 system.

That would still be a bit of a faff and so still may not be worth it.

Cheers,

Loris

-- 
Dr. Loris Bennett (Herr/Mr)
ZEDAT, Freie Universität Berlin