| From: David Mason via talk <talk@gtalug.org>

| I am interested in this question too. I currently am running on Debian
| 7.7 but I’m not sure I can upgrade to a more current version, which is
| frustrating because I want to install Java (to run a Minecraft server)
| and (when I tried, so while back) I couldn’t get it to install because I
| had such an old version of Debian.

Back in 2017 March 12 you mentioned a problem "Updating Wheezy to Jessie".
Did you try Stewart's and Lennart's suggestions?

I put a little time into it, but didn’t get to success. Unfortunately, life intervened. It’s still important, but as you say, as you fall behind, it becomes more difficult to leap-frog into the present.

This is exactly the kind of problem that a debian local users group might
address. Recently I suggested that GTALUG could function as a debian LUG.
I guess that here we have a test of this idea.

I think it already does. What did you have in mind beyond the mailing list?

Even for the debian upgrade attempt it might be good to have a backup.

Yes, I know. :-)

After enough time, the old hardware becomes obsolete too and it makes
total system rebuild more sensible than update. In my most recent
example, I jumped about 15 years ahead in hardware.

This system is <5 years old, and at the time was kind-of leading edge. so I’m not worried about that.

It’s a 4.4Tb raidz2 at 64% and has performed flawlessly. Unfortunately I don’t really have the time to do any serious digging right now, either.

How do others backup their ZFS systems? Getting a 4T external drive doesn’t seem like the best plan, but maybe there isn’t any other choice.

../Dave