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On March 9, 2020 at 10:27:25 PM, I created a VPS on Hetzner. It’s a 1 VCPU, 2GB 20GB. Price was around 2.49Euros. Nowadays it’s abot 3.09Euros. The benefit of such old VPS it the price. A new server, similar configuration, starting price is 4.33Euros.

The problem latelly are the Fedora upgrades, it started in a Fedora 26 and went until Fedora 31. I could not move forward with the upgrades due to issues with Docker and Fedora. From Fedora 32 there was implemented several changes that casue trouble on Docker.

System is working stable. But, I was starting to become annoyed that was not able update and I’m not willing to migrate all docker to podman.

back home

Since the home server HP380 G8, is working perfectly. The migration of all services, including creating a bunch of much more. It was time to bring home the data that was still lying on a Nextcloud and Gitea container.

the plan

Hetzner reliability it’s amazing. If I remember well I had one single issue that require intervention to restart the VPS during the whole time. Including the price I still have for this VPS can’t be lost.

The idea is to replace Fedora 31 by AlmaLinux. Since, I got more experience working and setting up VPS. This servers are going to live forever, less upgrades and migration is better. Not meaning that system shall not be upgraded. The issue with Fedora is taht the upgrade cycle is quite short, six months between release. EOL in two years. The upgrades are not the problem, the main problem is that it change quite a lot of things and break the services. Another problem, is that upgrades is a domino effect. You upgrade one system and then want to upgrade everything. Until it break, and you need to rewrite several settings.

how to

1. Create a snapshot to recover in case something goes wrong.
2. Mount the AlmaLinux image, it’s at the end of the available images list.
3. On Power menu, click POWER CYCLE to restart the VPS
4. Open a console terminal, if it was already open, click non reconnect
5. Follow AlmaLinux install steps