When exactly do I have to apply the migration steps - openldap-technical

6 May 2026


      Hello
the maintenance section of the documentation [1] describes:
...
the simplest steps needed to migrate between versions or upgrade
When exactly do I have to apply these steps?
I see these Options:
1. Only when upgrading from e.g. 2.5 to 2.6?
2. Also when upgrading from e.g. 2.6.12 to 2.6.13?
3. Or is this a case-by-case decision (like being necessary when 
upgrading from 2.6.j to 2.6.j+1 but not for 2.6.k to 2.6.k+1)?
The LTS Release Changes [2] mostly contain Bugfixes and some additions 
and cleanups. So my impression is that the update strategy would only 
apply to Option 1.
Is there any document or official statement, that can be used to 
confirm/underpin the applying Option?
For some context:
I have to run openldap with custom schema definitions in a Docker Image 
(deployed using a Helm Chart) and I have to make sure, that updating to 
a new Version of that Image will _usually_ not require manual intervention.
In addition to the automation aspect there is the time aspect:
Creating a Backup is one thing (better being safe than sorry). But 
importing it again does take quiet a lot of time (about 45 Minutes for 
an uncompressed 1 GB LDIF file). So I prefer not having to restore a 
backup _needlessly_. Though these timings might hint to other potential 
issues, that I did not look into, yet, e.g. attached network storage, 
indexing, etc.
In case of Options 2 and 3 I would have to take an entirely different 
approach (e.g. creating the Backup with the old Docker Image, while 
restoring it with the new one), compared to Option 1 (which only happens 
every-so-often and which _could_ be covered with an explicit and 
manually executed backup-and-restore procedure).
For the time being, replication/scalability is explicitly out-of-scope.
References:
[1] https://www.openldap.org/doc/admin26/maintenance.html#Migration
[2] https://www.openldap.org/software/release/changes_lts.html
Kind Regards,
Hans Joachim Multhaupt.