Redhat Update question

[m.roth2006 at rcn.com]

Peter,

---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:52:03 -0400
>From: Peter Skensved <peter at jay.phy.queensu.ca>  
>
>> 
>> Khachatur Shahinyan wrote:
>> > Dear Redhat Users, I have two question about Redhat Linux updating
>> > procedure. First: Is it possible to update the server's major version,
>> > like from RHEL4 to RHEL5, online? And the second, what should i do to
>> 
>> I have never found an upgrade path in any distro for going up a major release.
>
>   Huh ? Sure you can upgrade from a major version to the next - we do it
>all the time with CentOS .  The simplest and quickest way to do it is
>with a boot.iso CD and a http mirror. Just make sure you don't have any
>old .rpmnew files from previous updates as they tend confuse you after the
>update. This will get you from say 4.5 to 5.1 . A yum update will get you
>any additional patches. Last step would be to ( optionally ) write a small
>script to find obsoleted packages ( in 4.5 but not in 5.1 ) and possibly 
>delete them.

If so, CentOS is the only one. Every other full major release of every version I've ever dealt with - RH, SuSE, and, long ago, Slackware, *really* preferred that you do a clean install - there were far too many conflicts.

If you can find the, mmm, I think it was last July's SysAdmin (which has, lamentably, gone under after 15 years), you can see my article on Upgrading Linux, which lets you keep the old and the new (in case you need to fall back, or get something you forgot...).

      mark