Upgrading Debian LXD host to Bookworm (Debian 12)

LXD
1

I have an existing 5-node LXD cluster running on Debian 11 servers. This is a home lab environment, so if I have to blow it up, I can. Still, I am wondering if there is any prior experience or advice for upgrading Debian 11 to 12 and using its native LXD support.

I am curious about what will happen to my existing containers. The goal would be to migrate to a non-snap, native LXD environment without having to rebuild all of my containers. Is this feasible?

Thanks,
James

2

In a cluster, you could move all instances from one cluster member to others, then remove that machine from the cluster, perform the upgrade, reinstall LXD as a deb and then add that machine back in the cluster and move its instances back on it.

3

Thank you, Stephane. I will try that.

Do you know what happens to the snap version of LXD when I install the LXD deb?

Also, do you know if I will need to do anything to “connect” the old instances to the LXD deb install? Is their something like a container registration or manifest process to ensure the new LXD environment can “see” all the containers?

4

Did you have any success with this upgrade? I’ve got a single host running Debian 11 with ‘snap’ LXD that I would like to upgrade to the LXD built into Debian 12 (and later switch to incus when LTS is out).

# which lxd
/snap/bin/lxd

# cat /etc/debian_version
11.9

# lxd --version
5.20

This suddenly became relevant because the LXD image repository is now down for LXD 5.20 clients.