should I update?

[berobispo]

Hi!

 

I've been running two sbc (Odroid HC2) for about 1,5 years. I recently realised that the os it is running on is outdated (Debian Stretch with Armbian Linux 4.14.150-odroidxu4). There is a nextcloud instance running on it and I really (!) like the stability of my setup. So far, I've had one (1) crash in 1,5 years on a system that is running 24/7, maybe heat related in the hot summer. Reboot automatically once a week, nightly off-site backup, login via ssh-keys. So my question is...: Shall I update and if yes shall I do this from a fresh install or is there a built-in way?

 

Thanks!

[Werner]

DIstro upgrades are not supported. Also kernel upgrades with major version jumps are just barely tested, simply due to lack of ressources.

So if you can I'd recommend starting over with a fresh image.

[berobispo]

Thanks! I think the kernel stays the same in the new image, but since debian is upgraded, I should start from a fresh image?

But is there actually a downside by staying on stretch? Security-wise I guess the answer is: always stay up-to-date, right?

[Werner]

Stretch is still supported until June 2022. So if there are no new features in Buster you need or are a must have I do not see a reason to update.

[berobispo]

ahh okay. The reason I even realized that my HC2 is not running the most recent armbian is that I have another one, which I set up some months later and this other one shows the CPU cores differently in htop: "(.big.LITTLE)", whereas the HC2 running the nextcloud only shows 8 lines of "(    .LITTLE)", as if there were no .big cores. When comparing those two machines, which I thought were running on the same OS, I found out that in the months between setting up these two machines, there must have been the armbian OS update.

 

So, I guess I'll stay with stretch (and try to figure out why there are only .LITTLE cores showing). Thanks!