Migrate Rocky Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 9 via Ascender
This short demo shows an in-place upgrade from Rocky Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 9 driven by Ascender, using the ELevate tool from the AlmaLinux community and the Leapp upgrade framework. Greg Sowell frames it as a near twin of his earlier CentOS 7 to Rocky Linux 8 migration: the job template ties together an inventory of Rocky Linux 8 hosts, a project pointing at a public Git repository, the upgrade playbook and machine credentials, and a limit field keeps the run from touching the whole inventory.
While the job runs, the video walks the playbook. It updates the system to the latest packages, installs the ELevate package and leapp-upgrade with the Rocky data package, runs the Leapp pre-upgrade, then parses the resulting report for recommended commands and applies them along with some standard pre-upgrade fixes before performing the full upgrade and reboot. Community contributions added pre-upgrade, post-upgrade and per-host task hooks. The run finishes with the host reporting Rocky Linux 9.3 where it began at 8.8.
Greg also shows how to copy an existing job template or workflow, such as the CentOS one with VMware snapshots, and adapt it. He is candid that the more vanilla the system, the better the odds, and that CIQ's standard advice is still to build fresh and migrate data when possible.
Key takeaways
- The Rocky Linux 8 to 9 playbook is nearly identical to the CentOS 7 to Rocky Linux 8 one, both built on ELevate and Leapp.
- The playbook uses hosts: all with a required limit so it cannot accidentally run against the entire inventory.
- Leapp pre-upgrade produces a report; a shell task extracts its recommended commands and runs them before the full upgrade.
- A community pull request added before-upgrade, after-upgrade and post-processing hooks that everyone using the repository now gets.
- The demo host goes from Rocky Linux 8.8 to 9.3, though more customized systems are less likely to upgrade cleanly.
- Existing job templates and workflows can be copied in Ascender and edited rather than rebuilt from scratch.
Questions this video answers
Can you upgrade Rocky Linux 8 to Rocky Linux 9 in place?
Yes, the demo does it with the ELevate tool and Leapp, driven by an Ascender job template. The playbook updates packages, installs ELevate and leapp-upgrade with the Rocky data package, runs pre-upgrade checks and fixes, then upgrades and reboots. The host finishes on Rocky Linux 9.3.
How does this differ from the CentOS 7 to Rocky Linux 8 migration playbook?
Very little. The process and packages are essentially the same, with the Leapp data pointing at Rocky as the target. The newer playbook adds community-contributed pre-upgrade, post-upgrade and per-host processing hooks, and this demo skips the VMware snapshot steps shown previously, though those could be cloned in.
Is an in-place ELevate upgrade recommended for every system?
No. Success depends on how vanilla the system is; heavy customization lowers the odds. CIQ's standard migration suggestion is to export data, build a fresh system and migrate over, but where that is impractical this approach can be a good option.
This video is part of the Ascender Pro playlist. Browse every CIQ video by product and topic.
Transcript
hey everybody I'm Greg Sowell and I'm back with another ciq demo so this one's going to be pretty short and sweet because I've done something extremely similar already so I'm going to be using a sinder to migrate a rocky 8 host to Rocky 9 host it doesn't sound Earth chattery my previous one was uh migrating Cento 7 to Rocky 8 and it is an almost identical process just a few slight tweaks and I have a git repository that's already preconfigured for all that but I thought I'd show it to you anyway right just to give you some ideas maybe you didn't find the previous
one but this one actually applies to you so I have created a project inside of my environment I have tied all of my pieces together so let me look for Rocky here in my job template so this is my Rocky 8 to9 migration I'm going to click edit on it really quick just to kind of show you all the components I have an inventory again which is a big list of all the hosts that can potentially operate and I've got my Rocky 8 hosts in there that I want to migrate over I've also got my project which remember that ties specifically to a get repository
and then I've got my playbook right here Rocky 8 to Rocky 9 using the Elevate tool from our friends over at Alma Linux they put that together last I add my credentials uh to be able to log into the host and then I'm done I'm ready to just fire it off so down here in the limit section because I've written my playbook in such a way that you can't run it against all of your host you actually have to limit it down to a very specific set it's kind of protection make sure you don't blow up that entire inventory uh I have specified my specific
host in here so this one I am just doing the uh execution the migration um in my previous one I actually showed you how to uh do VMware snapshots and all that is very simple and you can do that quite easily in the exact same way I could have even cloned those workflows in here so uh let me pop in and tell you what I'm talking about when I say clone so I'll look for scent because I have some stuff as far as Centos migration Centos 7 migration goes and if I actually want to make a copy of something I can really easily so here's
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all my Cento 7 to Rocky 8 migration stuff if I actually wanted to start you know just copying these off I could hit the from the template section the little copy template button right there click that and it will make make a copy adds at and the date I can go into it hit edit really quick and then I can change all of this up right so it's already using the pretty much exact settings I want I'm just going to have to change inventory project Playbook well maybe I do have to change everything on this one but say for example it is the workflow with
all the various pieces if I wanted to copy that and then just make a couple of adjustments because actually most of the stuff that's in there is kind of the VMware copy I can actually do that really easily but I digress I'm going to pop back over here to the job section you can see the migration running I'm just going to talk about really quickly The Playbook and what is different from the Centos 7 to this so all this is virtually identical in the last one uh I didn't have any of the uh pre-task stuff in here so someone was kind enough in their environment
they actually use right here this extra stuff you see uh they are doing some uh before upgrade and then uh right after upgrade and then kind of a postprocessing where they have some additional tasks that they're doing kind of per host and so they made a poll request it all looked great we integrated it in and now there's extra functionality in here for everybody else so I digress that's just my way of saying hey please contribute please uh help out the uh the fellow admins out there essentially what I'm doing is I am doing an upgrade so you want to be on the latest version
of whatever you got the newest packages so it doesn't upgrade after that it's going to pull in the uh Elevate package so it's installing that in it's pulling in leap upgrade and then you're going to specify your uh system stuff and so here it is Data Rocky it's that allows you to migrate from uh or to a rocky host so in the cnto 7 it was the exact same packages U because it needs the data Rocky here I'm going from Rocky 8 to Rocky 9 so it is the exact same setup there I'm running through all of the same processes where it does the pre-upgrade
that pre-upgrade takes a little while and it actually finds any kind of anomalies that it thinks you may need to make changes in there uh keep in mind that this isn't perfect the more vanilla your system is right the uh the less like intricate customization you have the more likely this will succeed so I'm not saying it's going to work in every instance but it might work in some for you so after it does the pre-upgrade it creates this report file I have the shell command that goes through craws through finds all the various exceptions that they recommend and it will do those right here
as it Loops through but also I have some uh recommended pre-upgrade stuff so it's going to do all that last it'll do the full upgrade do a reboot and then it's going to display what our system is I'm going to pop back over to the screen while it processes and through the magic of editing you're not going to have to wait and we'll be back just a moment huzzah we're back and you can see it uh completed successfully and if I scroll all the way down it should show right here the version prior was Rock 8.8 and now the version is Rocky 9.3 so it
was able to upgrade successfully again your mileage may vary it just depends on your workloads what you're kind of doing in your environment kind of as our standard migration suggestion is to export your data in some fashion build fresh and then migrate over when you're doing versions but barring that this could be a good solution for you so this is the part where I say thank you for watching if you have any questions or comments please throw my direction I love interaction I have been getting so many suggestions from folks um Oliver as a fell out there who's been sending me suggestions on making videos
and so I'm happy to add those to the list and uh creating those and if you are a person someone of that that has suggestions please reach out if you would like some maybe help doing your migrations we'd love to talk to you if you would love support or you want to do some automation with Ascender please feel free to uh to give me a shout and if nothing eless uh I guess uh Happy automating Happy uh migrating and uh we'll see you next time bye
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