[SOLVED] Backup and restore configuration across versions

[TheOldPresbyope]

My grandmother used to love to admonish us grandkids that "the proof of the pudding is in the eating."

How nice to see this in full as opposed to the more usual but meaningless "The proof is in the pudding"

The idea of backing up and restoring moOde's configuration is dead simple conceptually; it gets proposed at least once a year by one user or another. Trouble is, the execution of the idea is anything but dead simple.

It is actually relatively simple in most cases: create an ISO of your working system and restore from that.
Do in-place upgrades where offered, then re create your ISO backup.
When an in-place upgrade isn't available for good reasons, then we are likely in a situation where a "settings backup" of an older version would incompatible with the new version anyway, so manual reentry of settings is going to be needed.

Am I over-simplifying somehow?

Not over-simplifying, but since the OP explicitly titled the thread "across versions" I wanted to address the landscape which has to be covered.