So after almost two years of procrastinating and a PC on my bench, I’ve finally finished the upgrade. Server has been running Ubuntu 12.04LTS (Long term support) version for almost ten years. I know it’s long term support, but that ran out a few years ago. So started to upgrade it to 16LTS I think, started writing down the entire procedure in a notebook. Some eighteen months later and it hadn’t been touched. Decided it really was time as sooner of later the server was going to die. I’d got as far as getting the web server working and updating all the SQL stuff, so basically this blog was working.

So a couple of weeks ago I decided to take what I did and actually document it in a word document. Three weeks later and it’s done (well very much almost). It’s completely rebuilt from scratch and now running Ubuntu 20.04.3LTS which is apparently good until 2030….I wonder if I’ll upgrade in time. Doubt it. Everything was fairly smooth when I followed all the instructions correctly. The original Shorewall config didn’t work, so that put up fight trying to get something going there. Also I have a fault in fstab somewhere and need to work out what root disc to mount, but that’s quite minor in the grand scheme of things.

Also upgraded the hardware as the old server was struggling with memory. Had a look around and found a ‘mini PC’ on Amazon for £270. It has 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, plus six USB ports and VGA. So was pretty much perfect. It came with Windows 10 Pro, but soon said goodbye to that.

It’s now all working perfectly except the mount issue, and it’s getting late. But now I have a very secure up to date server running Apache, Postfix, Courier and lots of other goodies. It’s all setup correctly with SSL and a very strict double firewall in my DMZ.

So overall, very pleased.