Prepare your migration to AL2023 - Amazon Linux 2
Review the list of changes in AL2023Migrate to systemd timers from cron jobs
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Prepare your migration to AL2023

You can prepare your move to AL2023 while you continue to use AL2.

Review the list of changes in AL2023

The AL2023 documentation contains a detailed list of changes that have been implemented since AL2. This information is located in the Comparing AL2 and AL2023 section. There is also a comprehensive list of software package changes located in the Package changes in AL2023 section.

AL2023 doesn't include amazon-linux-extras. Instead, it provides namespaced packages where multiple versions are provided. Because many packages are updated in AL2023, the base versions in AL2023 might be later than the versions that you are getting from amazon-linux-extras.

Note

We recommend that you don't run amazon-linux-extras, because it is EOL.

After you review these sections in the documentation, you can determine if there are changes in AL2023 that might require you to adapt your environment for the migration. For example, you might need to finally migrate a Python 2.7 script to Python 3.

Migrate to systemd timers from cron jobs

By default, cron is not installed in AL2023. You can migrate your cron jobs to systemd timers in AL2 in preparation for migrating to AL2023. systemd has many advantages, such as more precise control over when timers are run and improved logging.