Bug 1215331

Summary:	[doc] Issue in "Supported upgrade and migration paths to SLES 15 SP5"
Product:	[openSUSE] PUBLIC SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP5	Reporter:	Jonas Forsberg <jonas.forsberg>
Component:	Documentation	Assignee:	Christoph Wickert <cwickert>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID	QA Contact:	Frank Sundermeyer <fs>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:	https://jira.suse.com/browse/DOCTEAM-1125
Found By:	---	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Jonas Forsberg 2023-09-14 07:59:42 UTC

Supported upgrade and migration paths to SLES 15 SP5:

https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP5/html/SLES-all/cha-upgrade-paths.html#sec-upgrade-paths-supported

In the beginning of this section there's a note box stating that Skipping service packs is supported.

However, further down in the same section it states that "Upgrading from SLES 15 GA, SP1, SP2, or SP3 directly is no longer supported."

So skipping service packs when upgrading to SP5 is not supported, you must go from SP4 to SP5

I would suggest that we remove the note box in the beginning of the section to minimize confusion when customers plan to upgrade to SP5.

Regards,
Jonas

Comment 1 Tomáš Bažant 2023-09-29 12:28:57 UTC

Thank you for reporting this bug!
It is being tracked and processed as part of our queue.

Comment 2 Jonas Forsberg 2023-10-06 12:23:15 UTC

It might be that SP3 is out of general support hence the comment that it's no longer supported to upgrade directly to SP5.

But if it's still supported to upgrade SP3->SP5 if the system is covered by LTSS or ESPOS the documentation should reflect that 

Thanks
//Jonas

Comment 3 Christoph Wickert 2023-10-12 16:00:39 UTC

(In reply to Jonas Forsberg from comment #2)
> It might be that SP3 is out of general support hence the comment that it's
> no longer supported to upgrade directly to SP5.

Correct. While the upgrade is technically still supported, SP3 is EOL, and that's the reason for "no longer supported".

> But if it's still supported to upgrade SP3->SP5 if the system is covered by
> LTSS or ESPOS the documentation should reflect that 

It does. Further down it reads
"Upgrading from SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 / SP3 with LTSS or ESPOS

Upgrading from SLES 15 SP2 or SP3 with LTSS or ESPOS is supported both online and offline. Refer to Section 2.3, “Online and offline upgrade” for details."

If you have any suggestions on how to improve the wording and make it less confusing, please let me know. Removing the note on skipping SPs it IMHO not a good option.

Comment 4 Jonas Forsberg 2023-10-13 07:32:20 UTC

> > But if it's still supported to upgrade SP3->SP5 if the system is covered by
> > LTSS or ESPOS the documentation should reflect that 
> 
> It does. Further down it reads
> "Upgrading from SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2 / SP3 with LTSS or ESPOS
> 

Fair enough, 
Both customer and I missed that =)
I guess we stopped reading after reading "Upgrading from SLES 15 GA, SP1, SP2, or SP3 directly is no longer supported."

Sorry for the noise

Comment 5 Christoph Wickert 2023-10-13 09:08:24 UTC

No problem. I agree there is a mismatch between "skipping service packs is supported" on the one hand and "no longer supported" on the other. I'm currently working with PM on a wording that is less confusing.