releases-OX-App-Suite-v7-8-3 | Whats next? | Migration | Repository etc.

[dagee]

Hi there,

acording to the last announcement of OX the new release v7.8.3 is out
Look here

so there are some getting lost.

• Is there a Migrating solution from SLES 11 to SLES 12 and an migration to the new DB MariaDB 10
• what are the Repositories for the old release v7.8.2 and is it save to change them on a running system?
• ... or are we forced to stay on the old release without repositories if ther is no way to migrate to SLES 12 - which means we do not need subscriptions for updates anymore
• or is there a way to even change the Linux-Distro

[Wolfgang Rosenauer]

For migration from SLES11 to SLES12 please refer to your operating system provider. We do not document distribution upgrades. From our software perspective you "just" need to update to the packages built for SLES12.
For the database MariaDB is basically a drop in replacement for MySQL. Is this is also a distribution change to go from MySQL to MariaDB probably they have upgrade release notes for that as well?
About repositories: We always provide direct versioned repositories for older releases up to a certain point in time. So you can safely change to the explicit numbered repositories to keep receiving updates as long as the older version is maintained.

Obviously you can also change the Linux distribution to another supported one like RHEL/CentOS7 (still also 6 but for future safety I would recommend 7) or Debian Jessie. Again software-wise you need to install the proper packages and copy configuration, filestore, database, spool and cache directories if there are any.

[Garry]

In case you've not done anything yet ... having tried to upgrade a SLES11 system to SLES12, I must say it's pretty near impossible (at least that was my impression). SuSE has removed multiple standard products from their distribution (albeit, I guess the legacy-package still provides at least some). The update process removed something like 15-20% of installed packages, leaving OX nowhere near operational. With the uncertainties of how much work would be required to get it running, we recommended a clean installation ...
Which, with SLES12, again required a bunch of extra work ... the install guide of OX more or less states to use a standard installation. Not really. After having most of the system working, the base installation is running out of space (both free space and i-nodes), and that's with things like MYSQL/MariaDB as well as file store and imap folders on a separate volume ... not sure what the h*ll SuSE was thinking when they defined their default settings, but it's pretty much junk ... for a paid distribution (and not being cheap), I personally am very disappointed ...
At the moment, I have put about 2 days in to the new install, spent too much of the time getting into Dovecot (had Cyrus before) and configuring Postfix (sendmail before), the latter dropped again and replaced by legacy sendmail install, as Postfix was giving me all kind of problems with the virtual accounts, too much time getting the OX DB migrated (not SuSE's fault, of course), and haven't even gotten into things like the mobile clients etc ... pretty much fed up with the whole thing ...