Upgrading the system to a newer version using zypper dup

Warning: this procedure only works on openSUSE 11.1+

This procedure I have written is based on the official openSUSE wiki. I have made it more compact and readable.

As root:

1. check that you have an update repo, that is is enabled, and update the system using

#zypper up

2. disable all current repos using

#zypper mr --all --disable

3. add the new repos, for 11.3 the commands are:

 zypper addrepo --name "openSUSE-11.3 OSS" http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.3/repo/oss/ repo-11.3-oss
 zypper addrepo --name "openSUSE-11.3 Non-OSS" http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.3/repo/non-oss/ repo-11.3-non-oss
 zypper addrepo --name "openSUSE-11.3 Updates" http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.3/ repo-11.3-update

4. add 3rd party repos you had before, like packman, but be careful not to add conflicting repos. Check they are the 11.3 version!

5. perform a repo refresh using:

# zypper ref -f

6. do the actual upgrade, by downloading all the packages first and then installing (this is safer):

# zypper dup --download "in-advance"

Be sure to check the 'packages to downgrade' and 'packages to remove' part of the list.

6a. I noticed, and this is not in the official wiki, that the last commandline did not do the actual install, it did only the download. So you have to run

# zypper dup 

7. afterwards you can review all the repos (using # yast2 repositories) and remove the ones from the old version we disabled in step 2.

8. add any repo you miss here and you're done!