Portal:Leap/Things to know about betas
Draft
Caveats, warnings, etc
Here goes the text the beta installation pops up at the start.
Purpose of the Beta phase: chasing bugs
The main purpose of publishing the Betas is testing it, catching bugs. If you find any, please report in bugzilla (openSUSE:Submitting bug reports): this is a welcome mode of contributing. In case of doubt, ask in the normal Communication channels. There is "Factory mail list" where you can ask devs about bugs - but keep chat to the minimum here, developers are busy developing :-). For usage questions or if in doubt, use the normal channels. It is possible that the bug is already known: go read here openSUSE:Most annoying bugs Also read the openSUSE:Release Notes It is also possible to search Bugzilla itself for issues.
How should I update the Beta
Each Leap Beta release is considered a new full distribution upgrade snapshot, similar to Tumbleweed. Thus there are two methods of upgrading: install fresh, so testing the installation stack, or upgrade in place. One could use the "offline upgrade method" (boot the installation media, choose upgrade), or from the command line upgrade via "zypper dup". But do not use "zypper up"!
Why "dup" and not "up"? Well, as said, it is a distribution upgrade; "zypper dup" was designed for this case precisely. During the Beta phase packages can disappear or even downgrade, a situation that "zypper up" is not designed to cover. Once the Beta phase ends, after the last "dup" then this procedure should not be used anymore: from that time use "zypper patch", "zypper up", or the graphical apps.
Minimizing risks during upgrades
During these upgrades there is some chance of the session crashing or network failing.
One trick is starting "tmux" on the console. Switch to one console by pressing [Ctrl][Alt][F1] keys, login as root (login as user then su to root in text mode is the same thing, just longer), then type "tmux new" and enter (maybe tmux has to be installed first). Then go back to the graphical session ([Ctrl][Alt][F7]), open a terminal as root, and type "tmux attach". Now both terminals have the same simultaneous content; even if the graphical session dies, the tmux session doesn't (even over ssh).
Another trick, assuming there is enough disk space in /var/cache/zypp/, is first downloading all the packages; if the network dies zypper can continue. The procedure would be:
zypper dup
Don't worry, packages are deleted after the installation, unless the configuration was changed to keep them.
Q&A
Update repository appears to be outdated
zypper patch, zypper up, yast online update may warn that the update repository appears to be outdated, yet there are updates to apply. Why? Well, because during the Beta phase the update repositories are not used. Instead the contents of the normal repos (oss, non-oss) are replaced with different content. Just ignore the warning.
Can the desktop update applet be used?
Not really. Only for testing that updates work. There should be a few update test packages available (patches).
But zypper dup reinstalls packages I have removed
Well, taboo them :-)
References
https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2018-04/msg00307.html
https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2017-03/msg00302.html
https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2017-07/msg00379.html
https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2018-03/msg00451.html