A few tipps if you are forced to do that upgrade, for example because you are using a hosting provider like server4you that didnt update their virtual server images for over two years.
Basically you patch up your debian 4 to the latest version using the debian archive servers, add the archive server pubkeys, then update plesk from 8.4 to 8.6, to 9.2.2, then to 9.2.3, then to the latest version. After that you update debian 4 to 5 by replacing the etch entries in your sources (/etc/apt/…) and calling apt-get update/upgrade.
If you need to patch up your debian 4 you use the following repositories:
# etch packages.
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
# source packages.
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian/ etch main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib non-free
If you get the W: GPG error: http://security.debian.org etch/updates Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9AA38DCD55BE302B error then do the following:
apt-get install debian-archive-keyring
apt-get update
November 7th, 2010
Very useful, thank you
I found a “license key is invalid” problem doing the Plesk upgrade from 8.6 to 9.2.3 with server4you.
I’ve tried to upgrade the license key through https://register.parallels.com/key_upgrade/ but it seems that the e-mail address used within the server4you account does not match that of the owner of the license, so I’m waiting for a s4y response.
In the meanwhile the Plesk panel is blocked.
November 8th, 2010
Hello Bolorino, I had the same issue when I didn’t update to 9.2.2 before going to 9.2.3. Could that be your issue?
Updating the key is not possible without doing this undocumented step as far as I know.
November 14th, 2010
Hi again,
server4you solved the problem upgrading the license.
Maybe the problem was jumping to 9.2.3 without 9.2.2, but I don’t remember actually.
Thanks
November 16th, 2010
That’s what I call lucky. Server4you support told me they couldn’t help and that my only option was starting the installing process from zero one more time >.<
May 26th, 2011
Just a note
to be able to update system correctly change your source.list to this
#Stable
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
#Stable Sources
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
#Security Updates Stable
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
# Debian Volatile http://www.debian.org/volatile/
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile lenny/volatile main contrib non-free
# Debian Stable Backports
#deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free
May 26th, 2011
Also to do a full system update you need to run this command
apt-get dist-upgrade