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.