Ubuntu 18.04 LTS & service interruptions
It’s that time of every two years, when a new Ubuntu LTS release drops! Hurray! Since I started using Linux in mid-2016, I never had to work with an LTS upgrade, but I guess it’s now or out-of-date servers…as they say.
For all my servers that I run, Ubuntu LTS is the preferred OS of choice. Two out of my four home servers are on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (except for my NAS that runs FreeNAS, and my Raspberry Pi that runs Raspbian), the VPS hosting this website is running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and my mail server is running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Mail-in-a-box only works on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS). You get the point, I love Ubuntu LTS releases.
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is releasing on April 26, so once it releases I’ll be busy in a VM or two making sure all my software works. That generally means a few things:
- Can I run a LAMP stack and make a WordPress site run
- Can I run virtual hosts from Apache
- Can netdata work
- Can SoftEther VPN work
- Can UrBackup work
- Can a bunch of other software work
From what I’ve read, users don’t get notified about a new LTS release for an entire month after an LTS release, so I’ll generally be following that rule.
Unfortunately, finals season will be blocking any LTS upgrade attempts in late May. I’m not about to deal with one of my servers catastrophically failing during finals season.
I’ll be upgrading all my servers to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS during late June 2018 and early July 2018. I’ll post specific dates of when my mail server and email server will go down for maintenance. I’m assuming the upgrades will take about an hour or two. I’ll also be backing up all servers before running upgrades, too.
So, here’s your two month early warning that this site will go down for an Ubuntu 18.04 LTS upgrade.
