Redhat 8 to 9

[Panu Matilainen]

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Eric Rostetter wrote:

> Quoting "Randall J. Parr" <RParr at TemporalArts.COM>:
> 
> > Are there instructions are a how-to for upgrading from RH 8.0 to RH 9.0
> > using yum and/or apt-get?
> 
> No complete ones that I know of.  But it is fairly easy to do with apt-get,
> and only has a few issues (like uninstalling apt-get as part of the upgrade!)
> 
> > Any pointers and/or references would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> I'll try to write up something when I find the time, but I'm still very busy
> and just have not had the time lately to do anything (including reply to
> people who have asked me personally for help on this type of upgrade).
> 
> > I have been very leary of taking this course but would love to upgrade
> > my systems this way.
> 
> In my limited experience, an RH 8.0 to RH 9 upgrade via apt-get works well,
> but isn't for the faint of heart. I've also done some other upgrades.  My
> results are:
> 
> RH 6.1 to RH 6.2 via apt-get   Works really well, no problems.
> RH 6.2 to RH 7.x via apt-get   Many problems that must be worked around.
> RH 7.2 to RH 7.3 via apt-get   Works okay, only minor problems.
> RH 8.0 to RH 9   via apt-get   Works well, except it uninstalls a few things
>                                 including apt itself, which must be 
> re-installed
>                                 afterwards.
> 
> All the above are apt (sic) to produce some spurious error messages during
> the upgrade, but nothing serious.  The only difficult upgrade was the 6.x
> to 7.x, where a dist-upgrade fails because of dependencies.  I ended up doing
> it in three steps (apt-get upgrade with new repo, manual install of glibc
> and dependencies, then an apt-get dist-upgrade of the new repo).

There are couple of important things that make for a smooth apt-upgrade:
- Use a version which uses rpmlib for the transaction processing. That
  makes all the worlds difference for the safety of the upgrade, you wont
  be left with a system without glibc that way. 
- Make it use rpm's ordering instead of it's own on any RH-oriented 
  distribution: set 'RPM::Order "true";' in /etc/apt/apt.conf. Apt's
  internal ordering works more reliably for Conectiva but then they
  have different packaging standards...

	- Panu -