These forums are locked and archived, but all topics have been migrated to the new forum. You can search for this topic on the new forum: Search for Debian 5.0 Lenny upgrade on the new forum.
Web Hosting and Cloud Computing Control Panels
Howdy,
There are instructions here on upgrading Debian 5 to 6 (though, note that Debian 7 is about to come out):
http://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/system/os/debian-lenny-to-squeez...
Can it be down without hassle and/or downtime?
Well, that's a tall order :-)
I'd highly recommend performing the upgrade on a test server, prior to attempting it on your live server.
It takes a lot of testing and preparation to get to a point where there's minimal downtime.
But upgrading from one distro to another is a big deal, and there's plenty of opportunity for things to go wrong. The more planning, testing, and preparation you perform, the less likely you'll be to experience significant downtime.
When I do upgrades like that, I would generally plan for it to be at night, during a time when users wouldn't normally be using the server. And then, if something does go wrong, it's less likely to be immediately noticed.
-Eric
Thanks Eric, Yes some downtime during the night is ok, these are nice instructions so perhaps I will just do this myself :)