Hardware/software/OS upgrade: One approach?

[Robin Laing]

Don Levey wrote:
> Short question:
> Is there a way that I can take the RPM database from an existing FC2
> machine, plop it onto a new FC4 machine, and run some version of a 'yum
> update' to make sure all the packages I had installed on the old machine are
> installed on the new?
> 
> Background:
> I lost a partition on my home server a short while ago.  As a result, I've
> decided to replace the old drive with a pair of RAID-1 drives.  The old
> machine is running FC2; I want to be at FC4.  My plan was to take out the
> old drive completely, install PC4 on the pair of new drives, and migrate the
> old data over from the old drive.  Ideally, I'd like to make sure the
> software I've installed on the old machine gets installed to the new one
> also.  Is the old RPM database the key to this procedure?
> 
> Thanks for your help,
>  -Don
> 

 From my experience and from things I have picked up on this list is 
there are enough differences that it won't work that easily.

What has been suggested in the past is to make a list of installed 
packages using "
   yum list installed |sort > installed.txt"
Then doing a clean install and comparing the two lists.  You could 
strip the package mod numbers and then just diff the files.  Heck, you 
may even be able to feed the text file into yum and process it from there.

Copy the config files but there are enough differences that it may be 
easier to just redo the configurations.

I am no expert but this is a start.

If I understand correctly, if you just move or convert that rpm 
database, you will have a database that says packages are installed 
when they aren't.

I would personally take the time to install the packages manually as 
your needs may have changed.