openSUSE 15.2 has reached the end of its life cycle, no upgrade yet?

openSUSE Leap 15.2 has reached End of Life (EOL) on January 4, 2022, and users who are still using the system will not receive security and maintenance updates of any kind in the future.
All users are advised to upgrade their systems to openSUSE Leap 15.3 as soon as possible, which will receive security patches and updates until November 2022. The next release, openSUSE Leap 15.4, is also expected to be released in June 2022.

Friends who like the rolling update version can also take this opportunity to switch from the Leap version to the Tumbleweed version.

The version upgrade of openSUSE Leap can be upgraded online through the Internet or offline by downloading the ISO file of the latest version. Here we will see how to upgrade online.

openSUSE Leap online upgrade

Using the online upgrade method has the following advantages:

• Only need to download the package that needs to be updated, which will save a lot of bandwidth
• During the upgrade, although not recommended, you can still use the system, you only need to reboot after the upgrade is complete
• Because there is no need to download an ISO image file, there is no need for a DVD drive or burning a USB boot disk, all you need is a network

Of course, online upgrade also has the following disadvantages:

• If, for some reason, the upgrade process is interrupted (such as a sudden power outage, a disconnected network connection), the upgrade process cannot continue, potentially leaving a broken system
• If there are multiple systems that need to be upgraded, it may be more bandwidth efficient to download an ISO image

Note , if you are using an older Leap version, such as 15.1, please upgrade to 15.2 first, then upgrade to 15.3.

You can check the current version with the following command

> lsb_release -d
Description:     openSUSE Leap 15.2

Although a normal upgrade will not result in the loss of user data, for security, it is recommended to back up your important personal data before upgrading.

Preparation before upgrading the system

First check if the update source exists and update the package for the current release version

# zypper repos --uri
...
29 | repo-update                   | 主更新源                                                                              | Yes     | (  ) No   | No      | https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/opensuse/update/leap/15.2/oss/
30 | repo-update-non-oss           | 主更新源（非开源软件)                                                                 | Yes     | (  ) No   | No      | https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/opensuse/update/leap/15.2/non-oss/
...

Here I use the mirror source of Tsinghua University ( https://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/ )
If the update source already exists as above, go to the next step; if there is no update source, please add

# zypper addrepo --check --refresh --name 'openSUSE-Leap-15.2-Update' http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/15.2/oss/ repo-update

Move /var/cache to a separate subvolume

Note , if the root file system of your system is not Btrfs , you can skip this step

• Find the device name of the root filesystem

  # df /
  Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
  /dev/sdb3       62914560 37723280  24393296  61% /

• Determine the parent volume of all other subvolumes

  # btrfs subvolume list /

  Generally it should be @

• Mount the specified subvolume to a temporary mount point

  # mount /dev/sdb3 -o subvol=@ /mnt

• To avoid data loss, back up the cache

  # mv /mnt/var/cache /mnt/var/cache.old

• Create a new subvolume and move the cache back

  # btrfs subvol create /mnt/var/cache
  
  # mv /mnt/var/cache.old/* /mnt/var/cache/
  # rm -rf /mnt/var/cache.old

• Unmount the temporary mount point, then add the new cache subvolume to /etc/fstab

  # umount /mnt

  Add the following entry to /etc/fstab

UUID=4f648797-078d-426f-b103-51d9a73dd937       /var/cache    btrfs   subvol=/@/var/cache   0       0

The UUID here should be the same as the root file system.

# mount /var/cache

Update the current system's packages to the latest

# zypper ref

# zypper update

Perform a release upgrade -> 15.3

• Update software source version

# sed -i 's/15.2/${releasever}/g' /etc/zypper/repos.d/*.repo

• Refresh all software sources

# zypper --releasever=15.3 ref

During this period, if you find that some of the OBS software sources you added yourself are unavailable, you can disable them first.

• The last step is to perform a version upgrade of the distribution

# zypper --releasever15.3 dup

You may be asked about the changes of some package providers, because we may have installed a newer version of the package using other software sources before, we just need to select the corresponding option, and finally get the following prompt

The following NEW product is going to be installed:
  "openSUSE Leap 15.3"

The following product is going to be REMOVED:
  "openSUSE Leap 15.2"

The following package requires a system reboot:
  kernel-preempt-5.3.18-59.10.1

2732 packages to upgrade, 876 to downgrade, 394 new, 75 to remove, 2430  to change vendor.
Overall download size: 3.14 GiB. Already cached: 0 B. After the operation, 17.4 MiB will be freed.

    Note: System reboot required.
Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y):

Type a 'y' and press Enter, and the long download and installation process (depending on your network environment and the software source mirror address used) begins. During the upgrade process, you can still use your system ^\_ ^ .

After all the downloads and installations are done, you will be asked to restart your system, close all your applications, then restart your system and you will get a new version (Leap 15.3) of the openSUSE system.

> lsb_release -d
Description:    openSUSE Leap 15.3

After that, you can continue to add the OBS software sources you need to use (corresponding to version 15.3 of course) to install other software packages.

Summarize

The Leap release is a regular release version of openSUSE, and basically a minor version update is performed every 12 months, such as from 15.2 -> 15.3 -> 15.4; every 36-38 months, a major version update, such as 15. x -> 16.x .
openSUSE also releases the Tumbleweed version, also known as a rolling update version, whose software repositories provide rolling upgrades of all the latest packages.
Here we see how to upgrade a Leap version. The process is not complicated. In summary, it is to update the software source version, and then zypper dup . I have used openSUSE for many years, and almost every version is upgraded in this way.
To be honest, among all Linux desktop distributions, openSUSE is not very popular, but my experience is very stable, and with the KDE desktop environment, it is also a very elegant and beautiful Linux distribution, I hope I like the Linux desktop for office use Guys, try it out.

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[Also published on Mengz's blog ]