FC4->FC5 upgrade options

[Jim Cornette]

Albert A. Modderkolk wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 18:40 -0700, Craig White wrote:
>> On Fri, 2006-03-10 at 20:11 -0500, Jack Howarth wrote:
> [snip]
>> ----
>> if /home is on a separate partition, there is no need to deal with any
>> of that....just leave the /home partition alone with the 'upgrade'. You
>> should note though that things have been changing in the attributes of
>> the filesystems such as SELinux and ext3 and extended attributes which
>> an 'upgrade' may leave less than optimal while a completely clean
>> install obviously has no obstacles creating a house in order.
> 
> When I installed FC4, I tried to partition several file systems but
> failed.  The artitioner didn't let me do it so I let it do what it
> wanted...  I have now one LVM.  So... you are saying that if I
> backup /home, do a fresh install and restore the /home backup I should
> be OK? I'll lose those in /etc (e.g., php.ini) and also my httpd.conf.
> How about my ADSL config?  

FC5 test and most likely FC5 will let you do custom partitioning. I 
setup a /boot /home as regular partitions and put / and swap onto an 
LVM. The system turned out decent and /home can be maintained from 
installation to the ext installation. I could also customize the naming 
for my partitions so If I ever wanted to access the LVM to grab 
configuration files, special content or the like, the new installation 
is less likely to have same names. I used a unique name for the first 
portion of the VG (fc5vg or similar) and used lvswap and lvroot for the 
volume names. In the future, I would probably opt for leaving space 
available and not designated for any logical volumes and making 
individual volumes within the group with unique names for future 
expansion when space is needed for any of the volumes. Right now, one / 
and a separate /home is sufficient.

> I think I'll buy another disk (although my current 250GB should have
> been enough for the next few years for a dual-boot) provided that the
> installer supports a /dev/sdb (saw some notes that there are problems
> there).>>
>> installation.

Not all of the time. I prefer to upgrade over installing because of 
applications that I use might be complex enough to setup that 
reinstalling them again would not be a trivial u

I run two SATA disks on one system and have no problems with FC4 trying 
to manage the system. The installation is completely traditional 
partitioning but would probably work more efficiently using LVMs. The 
fill vs. usage is pretty decent somehow with most  being between 40% and 
60% usage. The mix just happened to work out to my advantage. If things 
changed much, I'd be in for it.

Just to clear things up a bit. The LVM scheme mentioned earlier is an 
experimental system. The SATA drive system is a valuable install and is 
used exstensively. My home systems are pretty much older hardware with 
IDE drives and common hardware with traditional partitions.

> 
> Albert
> 
> P.S.  Why are things always moved around?  I am going crazy enough
> between my home FC4, my production server SUSE 9 end test server SUSE
> 10... 

After some getting used to changing mount locations from /mnt to /media, 
the changes seem a natural fit.
  Wait until mounted volumes start using the volume names from the media 
being mounted. (Example: My Favorite Songs would be
/media/My\ Favorite\ Songs/ - (Cryptic a bit)
This is going to be an issue soon. CLI usage and GUI usage will take on 
new characteristics.

Jim
> 


-- 
Do not simplify the design of a program if a way can be found to make
it complex and wonderful.