Third party packages removed during online/offline upgrade

This document (000020400) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP2
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 SP1 LTSS

Situation

When upgrading SLES15 SPx to the next Service Pack third party packages are removed when calling "zypper dup" or "zypper migration".
After the server has been upgraded, these packages can be re-installed without conflicts.

Resolution

The SLES15 SP2 and SP3 libsolv update released October/2021 (libsolv-0.7.20) and
SLES15 SP1 LTSS update libsolv update (libsolv-0.7.20-4.3.1) released November/2021
include the patch to resolve the problem.

The update needs to be installed before the migration and before calling dist-upgrade (zypper dup/zypper migration).

Workaround:
Before calling "zypper dup"/"zypper migration", set a lock on the packages you wish to keep:
# zypper addlock <package>

Cause

Weak choice rules for orphaned packages is to delete them.

Additional Information

3rd party packages can also be put and kept in a repository that will stay enabled during the migration.
Then the packages are not seen as orphaned/dropped and won't be cleaned.
If there's no remote repository available, a local plaindir repository is easily created:

# mkdir /Local_Repo
# zypper ar -f /Local_Repo Local_Repo

Copy the 3rd party rpms into the directory.

Disclaimer

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