Upgrading from Redhat7.2 to new Fedora release?

[Karl DeBisschop]

> From: "Benjamin J. Weiss" <benjamin at weiss.name>
> To: <fedora-list at redhat.com>
> Subject: Re: Upgrading from Redhat7.2 to new Fedora release?
> Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 09:19:29 -0600
> Reply-To: fedora-list at redhat.com
> 
> > Hello,
> 
> > I have a computer running with the Redhat 7.2 release of Linux.
> > What is the procedure I need to follow if I want to upgrade my
> > machine to the newest Fedora release?
> 
> Not a good idea.  I found out the hard way that you don't want to upgrade
> between major versions, and since Fedora is supposed to be RHL 10 (though
> from the traffic on this list, it looks like it has *way* more problems than
> I ever remember seeing in RHL) you have three major versions (7 -> 8, 8-> 9,
> 9->10) to go through.
> 
> You'd be better off just starting clean with a new fedora install than
> trying to upgrade.

My 2 cents - I have several 7.2 -> 9 direct upgrades that are doing just
fine, thanks. I just used yum. You need to 'rpm -e --nodeps' for a few
RPMS first, and it will barf at the very end because you need to
manually install the newer yum.

The key, I think, is that you do need to cleanup afterward. You need to
list all your RPMs chronologically, and remove those that are obsolete
or upgrade those that were missed (for instance, I had independently
built RPMs many perl modules that are now part of FC1). And you need to
reconcile your rpmsave/rpmnew files.

I expect FC1 would be no harder than RH9, though I would try it on a
sacrificial box first.

The end result is fine, and may be worth doing if the machine is remote
and you cannot easily get to it. It also has the virtue of taking the
machine offline for a fairly short period - as little as 15 minutes. (In
one case it was longer because I needed to tweak a sendmail.mc file to
work with the new release, also, DHCP server has new option syntax, but
I caught that in pretesting.

OTOH, if the machine is accessible, and downtime is OK, a new install
can be a good thing. Go with that unless you have a pressing need, a
sense of adventure, and some good prep work.

-- 
Karl DeBisschop <kdebisschop at alert.infoplease.com>
Pearson Education/Information Please