42.3 sle migration

Migrating Leap 42.3 to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12

Note: an upgrade from Leap to SLE is only supported for Leap 15. Upgrading Leap 42 to SLE 12 requires quite some hacks as Leap 42 wasn't really prepared for SLE migration. Tech savvy hackers can nevertheless turn Leap 42.3 server installations into SLE systems.

1. disable all third party repos in /etc/zypp/repos.d
2. run zypper dup with only the official 42.3 oss and update repos enabled to make sure the system is in a clean state
3. install the SUSE key used for signing SLE packages

   # zypper download suse-build-key
   # rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps /var/cache/zypp/packages/*/noarch/suse-build-key-*.rpm
   # rpm --import /usr/lib/rpm/gnupg/keys/*

4. disable all openSUSE repos using zypper mr -d -a
5. register the system, pretending it's SLE12-SP4 using your SLE regcode. Ignore the error from the failed zypper call

   # SUSEConnect -r YOURREGCODE -p SLES/12.4/x86_64

6. replace the openSUSE-release package with SLES

   # zypper in --force-resolution -y -l -t product SLES -openSUSE

7. fix product links

   # ln -s SLES.prod /etc/products.d/baseproduct

8. remove some known file conflicts in 12 to avoid dup complaining later

   # rpm -e --nodeps libmtp-udev libmtp9 libtheoradec1 libtheoraenc1

9. fix up gawk

   # zypper in -y -f gawk; zypper in -y -f gawk

10. fix console font

    # sed -i -e 's/eurlatgr/lat9w-16/' /etc/sysconfig/console

11. upgrade

    zypper dup --allow-vendor-change

12. reboot and enjoy SLE!