Need help before update to DietPi v6.x

Hi, I have V159 on my Raspberry Pi 3 and I read that I have to do a clean install to update to v6. What can I do to not reconfigure all my programs?
Thank you

Hi crik91,

it really depends which additional software you use. Most data, generated by software that was installed via DietPi-Software, is stored in /mnt/dietpi_userdata/, so transfer at least this folder.

But some settings e.g. are also stored within e.g. /etc/. Pick and migrate the folders there, where you know the software and that you made settings adjustments to it.

But there are also other typical settings/data folder, e.g. /var/lib/ or /opt/, where special settings/data might be stored. It really depends, which software you use and if you really want to restore the exact behaviour of it.

In case of ownCloud and Nextcloud I made some backup script: https://dietpi.com/forum/t/owncloud-nextcloud-migration-script-for-v6-0-update/1867/1
Following the steps, will restore all data+settings safely on the new system.

I hope this helps a bid. In case name, which software you are thinking of explicitly.

In my case, it was a lot of manual work. I made a full backup, but didn’t restore anything automatically, opting instead to reconfigure everything based on the old config files.
Enough had changed with the new versions that a lot of stuff would just break if I copied over the old config files and data directly, like OpenVPN, MySQL (MariaDB) and Fail2Ban. Apache2 would throw a tantrum until I realized I had forgotten about a bunch of modules I had previously installed.

Luckily these “apocalyptic” updates are pretty rare with DietPi.

I agree, that these kind of updates should be kept rare, or even should be left out, if anyhow possible. I read much negative feedback about that, even that mostly user understand that this can be necessary, especially if the manpower for dealing with update routines and taking care about that amount software with old/obsolete/manual adjusted configs. The goal is indeed, to carefully patch users configs directly during update process to bring everybody on current stage of files, that we can expect/rely on for further development.

We did and further move our individual configs into separate files, somethink like conf.d/dietpi.conf instead of manipulating the main config file. This makes updating significantly easier without taking care about in case new configs from package maintainers etc.