Does using the distro make it too hard (impossible) to do upgrades to your system? I notice that you cannot upgrade between tracks and that you need to do a full re-install. Seems that with regular freepbx I can run do-release-upgrade whenever I need to and then upgrade freepbx without a reinstall. Am I missing something? With the distro if you need to move to a new track can you backup and restore all your freepbx settings?
Yes you are missing something.
The FreePBX Distro has provided the most comprehensive upgrade capability between OS versions compared to any other Distro that has been produced. The only place that so far has not been tackled is CentOS 5 to 6 and that is because of the hurdles that CentOS has created.
You can always choose to take control of your Linux OS and simply upgrade FreePBX, nothing stops you.
Even in the one case where there has been no OS track upgrade (CentOS 5-6) the Distro team has committed to continue providing Asterisk RPMs for quite some time.
So … the answer, look closer 
Look at the top of this page. Their is a sticky for each release track and how to upgrade it
http://www.freepbx.org/forums/freepbx-distro/distro-discussion-help
…right but not track to newer track.
Well that is not true.
For example we will provide a track upgrade from 1.10xx.210.62 to 1.11xx.210.63 once the 1.11xx.210.63 track comes out of Beta.
What we can not provide a track upgrade for is anything that is on Centos 5.8 to the 6.x tracks. It is not from the lack of trying its just nothing exist out there to go from Centos 5 to Centos 6 because of the major changes in how RPMs and yum work between the versions.
Understood. What is the recommended procedure to get from 1.8xx to 1.10xx?
I would not go to 1.10xx since asterisk 10 is short term release.
Ok what is the recommended procedure to go from 1.8xx to 1.11xx?
Tony told you that’s not out of beta yet. You can’t upgrade a machine to a beta release.
No he said that they could not provide an upgrade path from anything on Centos 5.8 (freepbx 1.8xx) to Centos 6.x (freepbx 1.10xx or 1.11xx). He said they would provide an upgrade path from 1.10xx to 1.11xx when it is ready. I am asking what the best procedure would be to go from 1.8xx to 1.11xx when 1.11xx is ready.
There is no “best procedure”, you run the upgrade scripts provided with the distro.
Have you reviewed the first 6 sticky posts in the distro forum (the one you are posting in)? Complete instructions are provided for updates, along with script names.
There is no upgrade script from the 1.8xx track to any newer track and there never will be one. That is why I am asking for a “best procedure.”
Use the backup module in FreePBX do a backup then use the same backup module on the new freepbx system to restore your backup.
The backup module will work across releases?
Is there a list of what the backup module backs up (and restores)?
Not sure if there is a list but if you look at the templates you will see everything it does. Yes it will work across distro releases as it has nothing to do with the Distro but FreePBX settings.
What does trixbox have to do with this situation? They took FreePBX painted it green and called it their own. They stopped doing that but the systems never stopped working.
I ran a test moving from Centos 5.8 to 6.2 with exactly the same version of FPBX on the old and new systems but asterisk 1.8 on one system and 1.10 on the other.
Having made the fullest backup possible in the backup module I ran the restore and everything I would expect to move did without trouble. Within the limitations of the test environment everything worked normally without need for any ‘tweeking’. If the same server is to be used for the existing and upgraded system I would estimate not more than 90 minutes of downtime in total.
I shall wait until Asterisk 1.11 is running well before upgrading a production system. In the meantime Tony will be providing essential updates to the 5.8/1.8 track so I don’t see a problem and I am confident the Centos/Asterisk backup/restore process will go smoothly when the time comes.
Great thanks for the info. I really like freepbx and want to make it work but I always have what happened to trixbox in the back of my mind.
No it never stopped working, it was just that the project was abandoned. Now we are switching to freepbx. Does anyone know if a backup from trixbox 2.8.0.4 will restore into freepbx 1.8xx?
No, but check here:
http://www.freepbx.org/forum/freepbx/general-help/the-official-end-of-trixbox-ce
as the FreePBX Team did an upgrade script that might work for you.
Good luck!