Best way to upgrade from FC5 to FC8

[Richard Shaw]

2008/3/4 Cassian Luppu <cassian.luppu at gmail.com>:
> 2008/3/4, Richard Shaw <hobbes1069 at gmail.com>:
> > 2008/3/4 Cassian Luppu <cassian.luppu at gmail.com>:
> > > 2008/3/4, Patrick O'Callaghan <pocallaghan at gmail.com>:
> > > > On Tue, 2008-03-04 at 14:11 +0100, Cassian Luppu wrote:
[SNIP]
> >
> > 1. Booting to the rescue disk
> > 2. Chroot-ing to the root of my installation.
> > 3. Making a backup directory off the root and moving everything I want
> > to keep into it. (/home,/var,/etc)
> > 4. Deleting everything else I could (not everything is a real file) a
> > la 'rm -rf'
> > 5. Reboot loading the normal install and choosing to preserve my
> > current partitions.
> > 6. Copying as needed out of /backup after install.
> >
> > Worked like a charm for me but YMMV.
>
> Oh, Richard, that sounds perfect for me!
> However, why did you chrooted your / to create  /backup?

It's certainly not a necessary step but I like to think in terms of
the root of the host system and not the root of the rescue disk
system. that way all my directory references start with "/" instead of
"/mnt/<mount name>/"

e.g. my commands are

mv /home/richard /backup
instead of
mv /mnt/<mount name>/home/richard /mnt/<mount name>/backup
etc...

I didn't have any problems doing this but in just thinking about it I
guess the mv command preserved everything that need to be similar to
'cp -a'

> Isn't it enought to just create /backup and move everything into it?

Well, you would have to create a '/mnt/<mount point>/backup instead
since the rescue file system would be read only (except for the ram
drive which wouldn't be big enough, or persistent for that matter).

> I mean, why booting using the rescue disk and all that to move just /home?

That guarantee that none of the host files are open which makes moving
the stuff you want to keep and deleting everything else possible.

Richard