Upgrade from Fedora Core 6 to Fedora 9

[Kevin J. Cummings]

Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Francois wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I'm running Fedora Core 6 on my main computer, and I would like to 
>> upgrade to F9.
>> I've just burned the appropriate DVD.
>> Do you think it's secure to upgrade from FC6 to F9, or do I have to 
>> format everything, and install F9 from scratch ?
> 
> It is possible to do as an upgrade, but inadvisable. See the thread, but 
> consider backing up your home and whatever and then doing a clean 
> install. The upgrade path seems to leave lots of old stuff you don't 
> want or need, etc, directory sizes tend to change which might suggest 
> repartitioning, and similar issues.

I just just that, only I went from FC6 to F9-Preview.  I wouldn't call 
it inadvisable, but its not for the faint of heart.  B^)

Yes, I've done lots of cleanup afterwards.  Especially since I also 
switched from i386 to x86_64 at the same time.  I did it using the 
x86_64 DVD for F9-Preview.  It went much better than my previous attempt 
to go to F8.  So long as you are willing to put the work into the 
cleanup, its very do-able.

> You can do it, but it may be more work and less satisfactory than 
> starting clean.

Actually, I found it *more* satisfactory than doing a clean install. 
Over the years, I've customized my system with what I want.  Many of 
those packages come from 3rd party repos.  I'd love an upgrade path that 
takes that into account.  None yet exist.  The best is to upgrade 
Fedora, then upgrade everything else.

It can be very eye-opening.  Some of the un-expected problems I ran into:

1)  fglrx doesn't work with 2.6.25 kernels.  Something about missing 
symbols in the kernel maps.  I'm waiting for ATI to release an fglrx 
that works with x86_64 and 2.6.25 kernels.

2)  VMWare didn't build for me.  I upgraded to the latest VMWare server 
(1.0.5-80187), applied the latest wmware-any-to-any that I could find at 
the time (which was 115, even though 116 is released and 117 is in 
ALPHA).  It still required patching 4 VMWare files to build enough if it 
to run my guest OS.  You need some i386 support since VMWare doesn't 
release x86_64 packages.  (boo, hiss!)

3)  Multimedia has changed dramatically since FC6.  MPlayer and 
mplayerplug-in have been updated.  There exist Fedora released swfdec 
and gnash (I couldn't get them to work), but I could still install the 
flash-plugin from Adobe (i386 again, so you'll need the nspluginwrapper 
stuff to make it work).  I can see the flash videos, but I can get audio 
to work.   B^{
     gecko-mediaplayer seems to take over from mplayerplug-in.  It 
worked straight out for me.  No problems with WMV or DIVX audio or videos.
     mplayer has problem playing mpeg videos for me, it may be related 
to fglrx not being available.

4)  Adobe Reader 8.0 works in Firefox with nspluginwrapper.  But its 
*very* slow rendering a PDF for me to see.  I don't know why, it could 
be paging in the i386 libraries.

5)  Wireless changed from ipw3945 to iwl3945.  I think its runs better, 
but I had to track down all the proprietary implementation from FC6 that 
my laptop came with and fix it for F9.  Disabling "network" and using 
"NetworkManager" seems better.  I don't always connect to my router 100% 
of the time, but at close to 70%, its much better than the 30% connect 
rate I had under FC6.  I have a wrt54g and I use WPA encryption for 
connecting.

6)  Printing is screwy.  I can print to my Samsung printer on my F8 
server, but printer properties don't seem to be passed along correctly. 
  It could have something to do with my originally installing that 
printer when the server was running FC5, then upgrading to F8 via yum 
(another long, slow painful process due to 3rd party repos).  It could 
also be due to the LPR-ng driver for that printer which was installed 
originally not playing well with the latest CUPS stuff.  So, I do most 
of my complicated printing directly on the server.
     Printing to other printers in the house is fine.

7)  There were *lots* of i386 packages left installed.  I spent a lot of 
time deciding which I needed and which I didn't.  I removed as many as I 
could.

8)  JAVA:  I seem to still have the latest version of IcedTea installed. 
  It hasn't bothered me so far.

9)  Suspend started working for me.  Hibernate no longer works.  I had 
been running cubbi_suspend2 kernels under FC6. I'm running straight 
Fedora kernels right now.  I have not yet gone back to play with 
tuxonice.  Soon though....  I had to clean up the suspend/hibernation 
configuration and boot stuff after the upgrade since I am no longer 
supporting hibernation.

10)  I read the install notes about what was being obsoleted and what 
was new.  I made sure all of my partitions were labelled, though I 
didn't recognize my label names after the upgrade....

11)  I was able to upgrade my mythtv-frontend from 20.2 to 21, but it 
doesn't work well.  It too may be because fglrx isn't working.

12)  I've cleaned up many packages as updates become available.

YMMV

-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at rcn.com
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://counter.li.org)