Is there a guide or howto on 7.2 ==> 7.3 overall upgrade?

[Mitchell Marks]

On Thu, 4 Nov 2004, Oisin Curtin wrote:

> Andres Adrover Kvamsdal wrote:
>
> .. after Mitchell Marks griped about minimal documentation

Honest, I didn't mean to be griping! And I think FL documentation is
coming along okay ... I was suggesting a change of outlook about how yum
or apt-get would be / could be / should be used, which would be reflected
in the phrasing in the alert messages.

[I said:]
> >> I prefer to handle packages one-by-one, and would thus prefer to see
> >> these
> >> commands in the one-package form with the applicable package name.

I probably was misusing the expression "one-by-one", which led Michal
Jaegermann to chide me for apparently wanting to override dependencies.
(Okay, maybe "chide" isn't right either!:)  But I'm perfectly happy to
have yum or apt-get point out dependencies, and suggest additions to the
install, which generally I then accept.

The only part of the yum or apt maintenance approach I'm being reluctant
about is the all-at-once updates.  (And taking this as the default.) I
admit I've been lazy about tracking down information about using and
maintaining an exceptions list for yum or apt-get.  But we've got packages
which (for three or four different reasons in different cases) should not
be automatically updated.  So for my situation, unless I buckle down and
make an exceptions list and get it to be used, a general "yum update" is
not a viable option.

[Andres (or O. Curtin?) points out:]
> Or just type  `yum update packagename...`
> frex: yum update scrollkeeper pxe

Thanks.  I mean it.

And that's what I do, usually.  My suggestion was that *that* form is what
should be suggested in the messages about particular packages.  So the
netpbm message, say, should by my lights advise running

   yum update netpbm

rather than

   yum update

Why?  (a) Believe it or not, sometimes I find it hard to locate or
determine from the message what the right package name to use would be.
Really!  Not netpbm or most application-level packages, but something like
glibc.  (b) Parity with the way the messages treat the RPM URL approach.
If the one-by-one outlook is okay for them, why not also for the yummies
and apt-dwellers?

BTW, thank you to both Andres and Michal for responding to my main
original question, reflected in the continuing Subject line.  We have a
7.2 and a 7.3, and would like to bring the updates process more into
alignment between them, and it seemed that turning the 7.2 into a 7.3
would be a way to do that.  We're holding off on it for the moment,
however, while my managers decide on various other matters.
 I'd have to confess that I'm also hesitant about it for reason of some of
the same 'one-by-one' concerns underlying my reluctance about all-at-once
updating.  We have things installed from tarball that would end up being
rolled back if we ran update from the 7.3 CDs, it looks like.

Thanks much,

  Mitch Marks


-- 
Mitchell Marks
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