Fedora upgrade from 6 to 9

[Claude Jones]

On Mon August 18 2008 10:29:18 am Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
> Sundeep Pundamale wrote:
> > Can some one provide instructions to upgrade fedora 6 to fedora 9. What
> > are the precautions that needs to be taken so as to not break the system
> > and existing configurations.
>
> The best advice I can give (having just done this on my laptop) is to
> read *all* of the release notes for F7, F8, & F9 before updating or
> upgrading anything.  Read about what has changed, and what you need to
> do to help facilitate the upgrade.
>
> I did the upgrade using the DVD installation media (from one of the
> FedoraUnity spins).  At the same time, I did an architecture change from
> i386 to x86_64.  The upgrade itself went pretty smoothly (the 3rd time I
> tried it).  I spent most of my time after the upgrade removing old .i386
> packages from my system, or at least seeing which old .i386 packages I
> *could* remove from my system.
>
> Then again, I like to tinker with my laptop, so I didn't find this a
> major problem.  I tend to do this sort of large jump (3 releases) when I
> do upgrades these days, and it *never* goes without any hitches.  If you
> are at all worried about it, try what Mark suggested and upgrade to each
> intervening release as its more likely to catch what's changed between
> each individual upgrade.
>
I would tend to second the above, but, I also am a tinkerer. I have two Fedora 
production boxes, though not running as much as yours; one thing not mentioned 
so far that's important if you're coming from F6 is that you label your 
volumes before you start - google this to learn how; I personally have moved 
to the yum upgrade method for all of my upgrades, and that's my preferred 
method - I was forced into experimenting with that method after a DVD media 
upgrade failed in mid-stream, and it worked so well that that's the only way I 
do it now for at least the past two upgrades on multiple laptops and my two 
production boxes; I would echo what others have said about backing up home and 
etc, maybe opt too, if you have anything there. After you're done, there will 
be much to do, and though it generally saves me time, it's not as much time as 
you might think. I posted some install notes after one of my upgrades to this 
list in the past year; you might want to search on my name and pull those up, 
they may give you some ideas...

-- 
Claude Jones
Leesburg, VA