Update from an old LE version

If running on an x86_64 or 32-bit ARM SoC device the Docker binaries are going to update once the new addon repo is accessible and this might throw up some minor config issues related to dockerfiles; sometimes Docker conventions change and there's probably a large enough jump from whatever (older) version is used with LE 9.2.6 for that to occur.

If running on a 64-bit ARM SoC device, LE12 changed images from "arm" (32-bit) userspace to "aarch64" (64-bit) and this forces you to remove all "arm" containers before updating and redeploy them using "arm64" versions once the update has completed. If you leave arm containers installed they will crash post-update due to wrong CPU arch.

Quote from makakam

Still haven't found time to update but I have another question: I want to do the update with tar files put in the .update folder, do I have to use some 10 version of LE first and then 11 or 12 so as everything works ok and I don't have to do a clean install? Thanks

Why you don't take a backup, copy it to a safe place, and try it? Upgading from LE 9.2.6 to 12 it's a very big jump and you still didn't specified your hardware, so maybe the real question is, what it's more time costly? Trying the upgrade and resoving the issues that sure will be, or a fresh install with all the new setup and addons and docker containers...

Between the LE 9 and LE 10 were big changes, and at that time the upgrade wasn't recommended. At that time I tried the upgrade from LE9 on my PRi3B+, I spent a lot of time to resolve all the issues, and finally I deleted everything and made a fresh install. But maybe on another hardware could work (or not... ).

I wouldn't advise a direct update from LE 9.2 to LE 12 as the Python2 to Python3 change often causes crashing and issues that some users find challenging to self-recover from. Instead I would download the update .tar to /storage/.update and then stop Kodi and rename the /storage/.kodi folder to /storage/.kodi-old and then reboot to start the update. This will give you a clean LE12 install. Then it's a simple case of stopping Kodi and copying the essential bits of userdata config back (sources, addon preferences, passwords, DB files, thumbnails) before restarting Kodi.