Upgrade vs Reinstall

[Sean O Sullivan]

Rick Lim wrote:

>-----Original Message-----
>From: fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-bounces at redhat.com]
>On Behalf Of Sean O Sullivan
>Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 6:05 AM
>To: For users of Fedora Core releases
>Subject: Re: Upgrade vs Reinstall
>
>Tim Holmes wrote:
>
>  
>
>>>Good Morning All!!!
>>
>>>As we look toward the end of the academic year, I am beginning the
>>>process of planning the IT projects for the summer.  One of the >major
>>>projects that I have in mind is to convert all of our FC2 boxes to >FC3
>>>-- I have about 6 FC2 servers in various roles around the school.  >What
>>>I am wondering is if there is a proper upgrade path, or if it is >better
>>>to back up the data and start over from scratch?
>>
>>>If a RELIABLE upgrade path is available, can someone please point >me to
>>>the docs etc (since this would be the first Linux upgrade that I >have
>>>done, a step by step cook book style doc would be real helpful)
>>
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>>I did similar upgrade from FC2 => 3, on various servers, it was a case 
>>of inserting FC3 cd, booting off cd, and then when anaconda loads >gives 
>>you choice to upgrade.
>>It took about 1-1.5 hours to do it, and afterwards all worked without 
>>problems, there is small issue with apache I believe, but once you 
>>update via your package manager it should be resolved.
>
>>Regards,
>
>>Sean
>
>  
>

>Can someone comment on upgrading using either YUM or APT-GET?
>I tried upgrading a system from FC1 -> FC3 using the CD method and it >wasn't
>100% successful, I had to finish the upgrade using apt-get, yum failed >with
>a strange error message.

>On another system I did a FC2 -> FC3 via CD and that was 100% successful.

>I am also considering a RH7.1 upgrade to FC3, can anyone comment on that?
>Thanks.

Sorry if there is any oddities in the quoting sections, had to edit due to nature of reply..

In regards to upgrading ... usually the CD upgrade is best way & you will usually have to do a 'X' update afterwards which will probably fix things (as you have PACKAGE_NAME_FC2 and must be updated to PACKAGE_NAME_FC3, so that can produce some oddities, as sometimes the package for FC2 is higher version than FC3's, so matter of waiting).

Updating from yum/apt/smart (really really nice package management tool for all distro's...) ... yum I am unsure if it's possible to do a dist-upgrade, apt it is possible to do, but I don't trust apt + RH/FC (never had good experiences), and smart, I've only started using recently, so unsure if possible.

As for upgrading rh7.3 => fc3, em ... no
I'm sure it would be possible, for a value of possible, however it's not something I'd be willing to try ... maybe a gradual update (to 8 => 9 => fc1 => fc3) ... again, i'd seriously advise against ... yes it probably is possible, but really not worth it...

Best method in my experience (if possible), boot from cd & upgrade, then do yum/apt/smart update afterwards, which should fix things.