install question

[Rick Stevens]

Dana Holland wrote:
> We had a box running 8.0.  We tried to upgrade it to ES 3.0.  Although 
> it's running, and the kernel appears to be correct, there are many 
> things that are not functioning, and the box still "thinks" that it's at 
> 8.0.  Upon further research, the official RedHat documentation seems to 
> indicate that you can't do an upgrade from 8.0.

8.0 to RHES3 is one helluva jump!  No, I don't believe there was a valid
upgrade path between those two.  Really, it was from 8.0/9 to RHES2.1,
and from there to RHES3.

Why?  Well, ES3 is a pretty different beast from 8.0.  NPTL kernel,
big changes in C libraries, desktop environment, lots of stuff.

However, it is possible that you truly are running ES3 despite what the
prompts and such say.  The "Welcome to blah-blah" is contained in the
file "/etc/issue" (which may not have been touched during your
"upgrade").  The file which indicates which OS the machine thinks it's
running is "/etc/redhat-release"

> When we boot off the CD-ROM, it doesn't give us options to upgrade or 
> migrate as I'd seen on previous versions of RH.  Does this sound normal?

Well, you're in a transition between the two, so it's possible.

> And when it gets to the part about disk partitioning, we aren't sure 
> whether to choose automatic or manual.  This is a production box - we 
> aren't being given more than a couple of hours of downtime to make this 
> conversion.  Will the automatic option wipe out what's currently on the 
> box?

I would recommend you choose "manual".  For each partition, edit it.
When you get into the edit screen, look and see what the partition was
mounted as before (somewhere it says "Previously mounted as blah").
Make sure you make the mountpoint the same.  Make sure you UNCHECK the
"format partition" option.  In other words, DO NOT ALLOW THE SYSTEM TO
REFORMAT YOUR EXISTING PARTIONS!  The install then will overwrite the
parts of the OS it has to, but will leave your data alone.

Of course, you must make DAMNED sure you have an adequate, full system
backup BEFORE you do any of this!  Any time you futz with OS upgrades,
you run the risk of hosing existing stuff.

You have been warned!
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
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-            The gene pool could use a little chlorine.              -
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