[linux-lvm] Red Hat upgrade over existing LVM

[Nick Urbanik]

Terje Kvernes wrote:

> Nick Urbanik <nicku at vtc.edu.hk> writes:
>
> > We have a number of servers with /usr and /var on LVM. The
> > difficulty arises when upgrading from one version of Red Hat to
> > another; the installation disks do not recognise the logical
> > volumes.
>
>   a well known issue.
>
> > Do any of you have any reasonable approach to solving this?
>
>   if you want to do the "normal" thing with a CD-boot-upgrade, no,
>   you're fscked.
>
> > Do I need to create a new network installation boot disk with a
> > small kernel with support for LVM and scripts to turn on LVM groups?
>
>   that's one way, the easier way is to either use apt

Does apt work with Red Hat in a usable way?  I tried it a long time ago,
and deleted it.

> or red-carpet to
>   upgrade your distro.  with red-carpet, fiddle with
>   /etc/redhat-release, apt has dist-upgrade, I think.  I've upgraded
>   two machines from 7.0 -> 7.2 with red-carpet, but I'd advice you to
>   set off a day with this, even if you get the rpms from somewhere
>   besides ximian.
>
>   I did it as follows: grab the rpms from RH7.2, with the updates,
>   from a local mirror, and dump them to /var/cache/redcarpet, then
>   fiddle with /etc/redhat-release (feel free to install the rpm
>   "redhat-release"), then run red-carpet.  things will break and fail
>   now and then, fiddle.

I have used rpmfind --autoupgrade
to upgrade from 7.1 to 7.2, and that required not a huge amount of manual
intervention, but more than I want.

I tried using rpmfind to upgrade this machine from 7.2 to 7.2.93, but it
changed my /lib/ld-linux.so and everything ground to a halt.

I had to reboot with init=/sbin/sash to fix it.  Now I have created a
directory
/static, containing lots of statically compiled tools, including the LVM
tools.

We really need a rescue disk that supports LVM, RAID, reiserfs and ext3.
Anyone seen such a beast, or do I have to make it myself?

>   these days I have a RH7.2-box that has an uptime of about 240 days.
>   :)

So you are not yet running a recent kernel?

--
Nick Urbanik   RHCE                                  nicku at vtc.edu.hk
Dept. of Information & Communications Technology
Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Tsing Yi)
Tel:   (852) 2436 8576, (852) 2436 8579          Fax: (852) 2436 8526
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