[Spacewalk-list] How to use Spacewalk to upgrade RHEL to higher version(s)?

Fri Nov 30 20:15:06 UTC 2012

Red Hat generally recommends against "upgrading" inplace from one major version to another even using the distribution disc much less this way.

I wish they'd come up with a way that is smoother like other Unix based OSes like Tru64 Unix, Mac OS X and others that will help you upgrade in place.   Unfortunately that's not the model with Linux.  One can hope and dream.   Having spent many years supporting OpenVMS, this was one of the nicer features of that OS from the very beginning.

I'm really not sure why the engineering teams behind OS upgrades for linux think that their method of delete and reimage for major upgrades is an acceptable model.   It makes it more simple in terms of clearing the deck of any cruft that the previous release(s) might have included that need to go away instead of having to carefully craft scripts that will comb through and eject things that must disappear.   It however makes it a major pain for the system admin who must worry about reconstructing the server exactly as it was under the new OS.   I'm sure that kickstart mechanisms can make this much simpler, but it's still a pain when you think about all the twisty little passages that make up a system configuration after the initial setup for special purpose servers.  Plus if you've installed custom packages that integrate into the directories under /etc and other system trees, you have to re-install them - you can't just back them up and restore them unless you're very clever.   Am I wrong?   Anyone have a different experience than this?   Tell me there's a magic easy way and I'll be happy to learn it.

Robert Boyd
Sr System Engineer | Peoplefluent
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From: spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Hamilton, James
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2012 2:45 PM
To: fnwsa at yahoo.com; spacewalk-list at redhat.com
Subject: Re: [Spacewalk-list] How to use Spacewalk to upgrade RHEL to higher version(s)?

I would not recommend doing this and i know it is not supported.  It will most likely not go smoothly either but if you enjoy troubleshooting and dont plan to put any of those systems in production, go for it.

Thanks
Jim

From: spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com<mailto:spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com> [spacewalk-list-bounces at redhat.com] on behalf of fnwsa at yahoo.com<mailto:fnwsa at yahoo.com> [fnwsa at yahoo.com]
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2012 2:14 PM
To: spacewalk-list at redhat.com<mailto:spacewalk-list at redhat.com>
Subject: [Spacewalk-list] How to use Spacewalk to upgrade RHEL to higher version(s)?
Hi,

I've tried to upgrade rhel 5 to rhel 6 for both i386 and x86 systems, but none of them working. What I have done were:

(1) Attach the higher version's channel to the client in Spacewalk server.
(2) Use 'yum upgrade' from the Spacewalk client.

Here are some errors from 'yum update':

Error: Missing Dependency: libpoldiff.so.1(VERS_1.2) is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libseaudit.so.4 is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libgio-2.0.so.0 is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libseaudit.so.4 is needed by package setools-libs-tcl-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: tcl(abi) = 8.5 is needed by package bwidget-1.8.0-5.1.el6.noarch (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libapol.so.4(VERS_4.0) is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libtcl8.5.so is needed by package setools-libs-tcl-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: avahi = 0.6.25-11.el6 is needed by package avahi-compat-libdns_sd-0.6.25-11.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libqpol.so.1(VERS_1.2) is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libapol.so.4(VERS_4.0) is needed by package setools-libs-tcl-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libpoldiff.so.1(VERS_1.3) is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libpoldiff.so.1(VERS_1.3) is needed by package setools-libs-tcl-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libglade-2.0.so.0 is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libpoldiff.so.1 is needed by package setools-libs-tcl-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libseaudit.so.4(VERS_4.1) is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: pkgconfig is needed by package OpenIPMI-devel-2.0.16-12.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: setools-console = 3.3.7-4.el6 is needed by package setools-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libapol.so.4 is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libseaudit.so.4(VERS_4.1) is needed by package setools-libs-tcl-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libqpol.so.1(VERS_1.2) is needed by package setools-libs-tcl-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: pkgconfig(ncurses) is needed by package OpenIPMI-devel-2.0.16-12.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
Error: Missing Dependency: libsefs.so.4(VERS_4.0) is needed by package setools-gui-3.3.7-4.el6.i686 (rhel_6_i386)
 You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
 You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
                        package-cleanup --dupes
                        rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest

Any idea? Thank you in advance!

nz
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