Migrating from 12.9.x-ee (Cent OS 7) to 16.y.z-ee (Rocky Linux 9)?

Problem to solve

I followed the recommended interim versions as recommended by the upgrade tool.
There are about 16-17 interim versions I have to reach.
When I reached 13.8.8, I started to have postgresql issue, googling for answers reveal some suggesting modifying the generated yml file but those yml are created by gitlab.rb which I attempt to modify but the error still show up in the *.rake file

Steps to reproduce

sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure

Configuration

Successfully upgraded from 12.9.2 to 13.1.11 now attempting 13.8.8

Versions

Please select whether options apply, and add the version information.

  • Self-managed

Versions

Instead of navigating all these interim version issues with multiple components that needs to match along the way is it possible to

  1. Dump data from GitLab 12.9.2-ee (CentOS 7) to some shared directory
  2. Import the data into GitLab 16.10.x (Rocky Linux 9) from the shared directory

Thereby alleviating a need to jump through so many hoops ?