CD-less upgrade (Was: BlueTooth Issues)

[G.Wolfe Woodbury]

Gilboa Davara wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-01-01 at 13:40 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
>> Gilboa Davara wrote:
>>
>>> 0. Backup. A faulty upgrade may kill your data. I'm serious. (And F8's
>>> upgrade is known to be, err, sensitive...). Keep in mind that in
>>> general, a fresh install (no matter what OS you are using) tends to work
>>> better (cleaner, faster, etc) then an upgrade.
>> I completely disagree.
>> Upgrade and install both work exactly the same.
>> Have you actually tried both, or do you just _know_?
> 
> Know. (dep-solve bug)
<snip>
> 
> As I said, it's far easier (... and faster!) to do a fresh install on a
> spare partition and migrate all the configuration files to the new
> installation.

I have to agree with Gilboa here.  An upgrade installs the new packages
and then removes the old packages, while an install wipes the selected
filesystems and simply installs into the clean space.

This solves several nagging problems that can effect an upgraded system.

As for backup, the minimal set of stuff that really requires a backup
are: /etc     #Configuration data
     /var     #spool, www, ftp and such
     /home    #if not on a separate file system that can be preserved
     /usr/local   #again, if not on a separate filesystem

The remaining filesystems that should usually be on mounted sections
(root, usr, srv, usr, boot) can be wiped/reformatted.

I will note that the "default" filesystem layout selected by the F8
installer (anaconda version) is *not* quite as robust as it could be.
It seems too much like another commercial OS in that it only makes two
filesystems (boot and root) and crams everything together in root.  This
requires the user to make full backups at upgrade time.

At a minimum I recommend three partitions: boot, root and home
At "best" I use: root, boot, usr, usr/local, home, var, tmp, srv

There are good reasons for such separation, and there are some standard
recommendations for sizes, but that is another discussion.

-- 
Wolfe