Service Pack migration not possible in SUSE Manager when LTSS is active

This document (000019827) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Manager 4.2
SUSE Manager 4.1
SUSE Manager 4.0 (EOL)
SUSE Manager 3.2 (EOL)
SUSE Manager 3.1 (EOL)
SUSE Manager 3.0 (EOL)

Situation

When trying to upgrade a system by performing a "Service Pack Migration", this is not possible if the LTSS product is activated in the source SP, but not available in the destination SP (which is the regular use case).
Latest versions of SUSE Manager will throw quite a verbose error. This is an example of a migration from SLES 12 SP3 to SLES 12 SP5, for which the LTSS does not exist yet. A SUSE Manager 4.1 would show this message when navigating to the SP Migration tab:

There is no migration available for this system. For some of the installed extensions no successor could be found:
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server LTSS 12 SP3 x86_64

Older versions of SUSE Manager might not show so much detail and simply omit which one is the conflicting product.

Resolution

Update

With SUSE Manager 4.3, this cleanup process is no longer necessary. It is now possible to migrate products even if the target product doesn’t have some of the successors, such as an LTSS product. See the SUSE Manager 4.3 release notes:https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-MANAGER/4.3/index.html

This problem is not specific of SUSE Manager, however the resolution is a bit different here.

First of all, the LTSS updates channels needs to be removed from the affected server(s). Easiest way to achieve it would be from the web-UI, navigating to the "Software" tab of the affected system(s), software, software channels and the LTSS channel can be easy deselected from here.

Secondly, the release packages need to be removed from the server manually. This can be done also from the web-UI, in the software tab, packages, list/remove. Here it is possible to filter in the search box by name, an appropriate search would be "ltss", and the packages to be removed are:

sles-ltss-release
sles-ltss-release-POOL

It is also possible to simply remove them with zypper:

zypper rm -y sles-ltss-release sles-ltss-release-POOL

Cause

The LTSS product is not available in the target service pack, so it needs to be removed from the source service pack first.

Additional Information

SUSE Manager 4.3 release notes: https://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-MANAGER/4.3/index.html

SLES12-GA with LTSS might show an available migration path to SLES12-SP1 with LTSS.

However, from SLES12-SP3 with LTSS there are no available migration paths.
Removing the LTSS repository from SLES12-GA will allow migration directly to SLES12-SP2/SP3.

For additional LTSS info see:
https://www.suse.com/products/long-term-service-pack-support/
https://www.suse.com/lifecycle/
https://www.suse.com/support/policy/

The same (or similar issues) can be found in the following articles:
https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000019090
https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000019394

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.