Part V Updating and Upgrading SUSE Linux Enterprise

If you are not familiar with SUSE Linux Enterprise updates, upgrades and service packs in general, this chapter will give you some background information on terminology, SUSE product lifecycles and Service Pack releases, and recommended upgrade policies.

SUSE® Linux Enterprise (SLE) allows to update an existing system to the new version, for example, going from SLE 11 SP4 to SLE 12. No new installation is needed. Existing data, such as home and data directories and system configuration, is kept intact. You can update from a local CD or DVD drive or from a central network installation source.

This chapter explains how to manually upgrade your SUSE Linux Enterprise system, be it by DVD, network, an automated process, or SUSE Manager.

SUSE offers a graphical and a command line tool to upgrade to a new service pack. These are simple command line tools, an intuitive graphical user interface, support for “rollback” of service packs, and some more. This chapter explains how to do a service pack migration step by step with these tools.

SUSE extensively uses backports, for example for the migration of current software fixes and features into released SUSE Linux Enterprise packages. The information in this chapter helps you understand why it can be deceptive to compare version numbers to judge the capabilities and the security of SUSE Linux Enterprise software packages. You will understand how SUSE keeps the system software secure and current while maintaining compatibility for your application software on top of SUSE Linux Enterprise products. You will also learn how to check which public security issues actually are addressed in your SUSE Linux Enterprise system software, and how current your software really is.