Update from MySQL 5.6 to MariaDB, or wait until Update to Debian Stretch?

Quote from freedom

Hello community,

just a few days ago we updated from mysql 5.5 to 5.6 on Debian Jessie with I-MSCP 1.5.3, thanks to Nuxwin. Today I have a few questions regarding the options to update to MariaDB, since with Debian Stretch, MySQL will be replaced with MariaDB.

We alread have plans for the full distribution update to Debian Stretch, but until this can work, we have to check some of our software. I searched for a I-MSCP Autoinstaller Update to MariaDB and found the following: Von MySQL 5.5 zu 5.6 oder MariaDB 10

In latest i-MSCP versions, the installer doesn't allow automatic switch from one SQL vendor to another. The reason behind this is that switching to other vendor is not always an all-in-one task that can be achieved without any administrator intervention. That being said, i-MSCP still provide MySQL for Debian Stretch (version 5.6 and 5.7) through MySQL community repository and so, it's shouldn't be so difficult to upgrade your Debian system and once done, rerun the i-MSCP installer.

If you want really update to MariaDB 10.1 (SQL vendor/version provided by Debian Team), what I would recommend, you must do the job manually, as part of the Distribution upgrade. In order, that means:

1. Removing the APT preferences file provided by i-MSCP and which is located at /etc/apt/preferences.d/imscp
2. Removing the MySQL 5.6 repository from the APT /etc/apt/sources.list file
3. Updating all repositories URI for Debian Stretch in the APT /etc/apt/sources.list file
4. Running the apt-update and apt-get dist-upgrade commands

Updating from MySQL 5.6 to MariaDB 10.1 shouldn't pose any problem but as always, you should really considere to backup your data first (/var/lib/mysql directory), including making a real dump of your databases (even the mysql database). Note that there is no need to update to MariaDB 10.0 first.

In any case, after the system upgrade (Jessie to Stretch), you must not forget to rerun the i-MSCP installer as follows: perl imscp-autoinstall -dr sql and when asked, select the MariaDB 10.1 SQL vendor/version.

Does my answer is clear enough for you?

Quote from freedom

Thank you for your answer. We would like to update to MariaDB 10.1 in the first place and we would like to finish the distrubtion update to Debian Stretch later on. So if I understand you correct, it is possible without i-mscp related problems to update from MySQL 5.6 to MariaDB 10.1 with Debian Jessie, if we force the autoinstaller to show all vendors when we override the imscp.conf, right?

I wouldn't take that road but of course, you can always trick the i-MSCP installer by manually setting the SQL_SERVER parameter in the /etc/imscp/imscp.conf file to mariadb_10.1, then rerun the i-MSCP autoinstaller (from version 1.5.3) as follows: perl imscp-autoinstall -d

If you do so, make sure first that there is not a /etc/imscp/imscpOld.conf file resulting of a previous failure. If that file exists, your must remove it prior running the installer.

Note that in the above scenario, MariaDB 10.1 will be installed from the MariaDB repository, not from the Debian repository. That should not pose any problem but the backup is still needed for safety.