Security Server Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04 In-place Upgrade.

Owned by Eneli Reimets
Last updated: May 22, 2024
4 min read

This document describes the steps required for upgrading a stand-alone Security Server host from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS host to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Please read carefully through the whole document before starting the upgrade process. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the Ubuntu Linux distribution and has experience of Ubuntu release upgrades.

If the Security Server host to be updated has older Ubuntu version than Ubuntu 22.04, the update to 20.04 version should be done first for example https://nordic-institute.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/XRDKB/pages/82313217

With the upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, PostgreSQL is updated from version 14 to 16.

Alternative method: Upgrading Security Server to Ubuntu 24.04 Using a Configuration Backup.

Preparations

If upgrading a system that uses a hardware security module: Please verify that the HSM is compatible with Ubuntu 24.04 and check the HSM module documentation for upgrade instructions.

  • Review the Ubuntu release notes and upgrade instructions:

  • Update all packages to the latest versions:

    • apt update && apt full-upgrade

  • Ensure that the X-Road software version is at least 7.5.0.

  • Recommended: Make sure that you have an up-to-date backup (or virtual machine snapshot) of the server and database.

  • Use the admin UI to take a backup of the Security Server configuration and download it to a safe location

    • This makes it possible to restore the server configuration if the upgrade fails for some reason.

  • Stop the Security Server and prevent it from starting automatically at boot:

    • All running xroad services can be listed with sudo systemctl list-units "xroad-*"

    • Stop the services with sudo systemctl stop "xroad-*"

    • Use the previously listed xroad service list for disable command as disable does not support wildcards as stop and list-units do.

      sudo systemctl disable xroad-addon-messagelog.service xroad-base.service xroad-confclient.service xroad-monitor.service xroad-opmonitor.service xroad-proxy-ui-api.service xroad-proxy.service xroad-signer.service

  • Optionally, take backup of the message log database. Without a backup, a failure in the upgrade process may cause loss of data.

    • See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/backup.html

    • Using pg_dump is a straightforward option, but can be problematic if the database is extremely large:
      sudo -iu postgres pg_dump -d messagelog -F c -f <dump_file>

    • Reducing the size of the message log database dump: By default the message log database keeps 30 days of message records but one can (temporarily) change the retention time in order to reduce the number of records in the database, thus reducing the size of the database dump. Changing the setting has no immediate effect since by default the message log cleanup is run twice a day (noon and midnight). See Security Server User Guide: 11.1 Changing the Configuration of the Message Log for more information.

  • Optionally, take a backup of the archived message log files.

    • Note that some of the logged messages might not have been archived yet and exist only in the database.

  • Optionally, take backup of the operational monitoring database (if xroad-opmonitoring is installed). Without a backup, a failure in the upgrade process may cause loss of data.

Upgrading Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04

  • Install update-manager-core if it is not already installed.

  • Make sure the Prompt line in /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades is set to 'lts'.

  • Launch the upgrade tool with the command sudo do-release-upgrade.

  • Follow the on-screen instructions.

  • When the upgrade is finished, reboot when prompted.

Upgrading the X-Road software

Upgrade the database

  • The Ubuntu upgrade process by default creates an empty database instance that should be removed before the old database is upgraded to version 16.

  • List the database instances with pg_lsclusters, and drop the extra ones
    Do not remove the version 14 (main) running on port 5432

    $ sudo pg_lsclusters Ver Cluster Port Status Owner Data directory Log file 14 main 5432 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/14/main /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-14-main.log 16 main 5433 online postgres /var/lib/postgresql/16/main /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-16-main.log $ sudo pg_dropcluster --stop 16 main

  • Upgrade the old database to version 16.

    Ubuntu's pg_upgradecluster helper script by default dumps the old database, which can require a lot of time and free disk space if the database is large. The --method=upgrade uses pg_upgrade instead and the --link option avoids copying the data files.
    Using --link requires that the new and old database are in the same filesystem. See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/16/pgupgrade.html for details and recovery instructions.

Update the X-Road package repository to point to the Ubuntu 24.04 packages

Update the apt repository:

Alternatively, find the repository definition in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xroad.list and edit it directly. More about Debian source lists.

Upgrade the packages

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

Then enable and start xroad services again. Although enable does not work with wildcards, so the services being enabled need to be listed all manually:

Services can be started with:

sudo systemctl start "xroad-*" --all

Verify that the security server services are running and the system is responding

* if the monitoring addon(s) are installed

Drop old database and obsolete packages

After verifying that the database upgrade was successful, drop the old database and remove obsolete PostgreSQL packages.

sudo pg_dropcluster 14 main
sudo apt purge postgresql-14
sudo apt autoremove

Troubleshooting