9:20 a.m.
I'm looking for some suggestions on how to upgrade an older Fedora system
and keep as many of the configurations as possible for the applications
that are being used.
Currently the system is running Fedora 16 and there are at least two
things that are preventing me from successfully running fedup or the yum
upgrade.
The first stumbling block is that system was installed with separate
partitions for /, /boot, /var, & /usr and I think that the separation of /
and /usr is my biggest issue.
The second issue is the system is setup with RAID1 on all partitions with
the bootloader (Grub ?) installed on both disks in the event of a disk
failure.
I would like to avoid a new/clean install (I know I can preserve /home) if
at all possible.
Any suggestions on how to proceed?
Thanks, Jeff
9:52 a.m.
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 10:20:44 -0400 "Jeffrey Ross" <jeff(a)bubble.org>
wrote:
I'm looking for some suggestions on how to upgrade an older
Fedora system
and keep as many of the configurations as possible for the applications
that are being used.
The recommendation is to go through successive upgrades one after the other. However, I am
very doubtful that one of these will not break. I seem to recall that F18 or F19 was the
one which broke upgrades (I think it was F19).
Currently the system is running Fedora 16 and there are at least two
things that are preventing me from successfully running fedup or the yum
upgrade.
The first stumbling block is that system was installed with separate
partitions for /, /boot, /var, & /usr and I think that the separation of /
and /usr is my biggest issue.
I don't see why this should be an issue in a clean install. Are you wanting to keep
/usr because you installed programs here? You may consider moving files that you created
to a separate directory inside your home partition and then pushing it back. One
possibility is to partition the current /usr and then move the programs to that new
partition and keep that one in a new install.
The second issue is the system is setup with RAID1 on all partitions
with
the bootloader (Grub ?) installed on both disks in the event of a disk
failure.
I am not sure how RAID0 figures into this equation: I have not much knowledge of this,
sorry.
I would like to avoid a new/clean install (I know I can preserve
/home) if
at all possible.
You can pretty much preserve whichever partition you want as long as it makes sense. For
instance, you could keep a separate /usr/local partition where you could put your local
installed programs. But this is after the fact so will not be helpful.
Any suggestions on how to proceed?
It is for situations such as these that I wish that there was also a rolling-release
version of Fedora.
Many thanks and best wishes,
Ranjan
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10:53 a.m.
just this week, i moved from f17 -> f21.
i found most config stuff under /etc for host and all /home/jackc for the
rest.
i slammed these to an offline drive, copying homdir back after the os was
ready.
naturally, YMMV...
On Fri, Oct 30, 2015 at 7:52 AM, Ranjan Maitra <
maitra.mbox.ignored(a)inbox.com> wrote:
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 10:20:44 -0400 "Jeffrey Ross"
<jeff(a)bubble.org> wrote:
> I'm looking for some suggestions on how to upgrade an older Fedora system
> and keep as many of the configurations as possible for the applications
> that are being used.
The recommendation is to go through successive upgrades one after the
other. However, I am very doubtful that one of these will not break. I seem
to recall that F18 or F19 was the one which broke upgrades (I think it was
F19).
> Currently the system is running Fedora 16 and there are at least two
> things that are preventing me from successfully running fedup or the yum
> upgrade.
>
> The first stumbling block is that system was installed with separate
> partitions for /, /boot, /var, & /usr and I think that the separation of
/
> and /usr is my biggest issue.
I don't see why this should be an issue in a clean install. Are you
wanting to keep /usr because you installed programs here? You may consider
moving files that you created to a separate directory inside your home
partition and then pushing it back. One possibility is to partition the
current /usr and then move the programs to that new partition and keep that
one in a new install.
> The second issue is the system is setup with RAID1 on all partitions with
> the bootloader (Grub ?) installed on both disks in the event of a disk
> failure.
I am not sure how RAID0 figures into this equation: I have not much
knowledge of this, sorry.
> I would like to avoid a new/clean install (I know I can preserve /home)
if
> at all possible.
You can pretty much preserve whichever partition you want as long as it
makes sense. For instance, you could keep a separate /usr/local partition
where you could put your local installed programs. But this is after the
fact so will not be helpful.
> Any suggestions on how to proceed?
It is for situations such as these that I wish that there was also a
rolling-release version of Fedora.
Many thanks and best wishes,
Ranjan
____________________________________________________________
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Use Password manager! It stores your passwords & protects your account.
Check it out at http://mysecurelogon.com/manager
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2:12 p.m.
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 10:20:44 -0400 "Jeffrey Ross"
<jeff(a)bubble.org> wrote:
> I'm looking for some suggestions on how to upgrade an older Fedora
> system
> and keep as many of the configurations as possible for the applications
> that are being used.
The recommendation is to go through successive upgrades one after the
other. However, I am very doubtful that one of these will not break. I
seem to recall that F18 or F19 was the one which broke upgrades (I think
it was F19).
I'm aware of the recommendation to go through successive releases, the
problem is I can't even get to Fedora 17 because / and /usr are split into
two different file systems.
> Currently the system is running Fedora 16 and there are at least two
> things that are preventing me from successfully running fedup or the yum
> upgrade.
>
> The first stumbling block is that system was installed with separate
> partitions for /, /boot, /var, & /usr and I think that the separation of
> / and /usr is my biggest issue.
I don't see why this should be an issue in a clean install. Are you
wanting to keep /usr because you installed programs here? You may consider
moving files that you created to a separate directory inside your home
partition and then pushing it back. One possibility is to partition the
current /usr and then move the programs to that new partition and keep
that one in a new install.
I would rather avoid a clean install if at all possible, of course I may
not have a choice if I want to upgrade.
The current recommendation (requirement?) is that / and /usr be the same
partition, I'm pretty sure the problem with /usr being its own partition
is the location of /usr/sbin and /usr/bin both of which aren't mounted
when the upgrade is attempted.
I came from the real old school where everything had its own partition,
today this isn't the best way to do things and now I have a "broken"
system when it comes to upgrading.
> The second issue is the system is setup with RAID1 on all
partitions with
> the bootloader (Grub ?) installed on both disks in the event of a disk
failure.
I am not sure how RAID0 figures into this equation: I have not much
knowledge of this, sorry.
I think there were some issues with using RAID on the boot partition but
I'm not positive.
5:47 p.m.
On 10/30/2015 12:12 PM, Jeffrey Ross wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 10:20:44 -0400 "Jeffrey Ross"
<jeff(a)bubble.org> wrote:
>
>> I'm looking for some suggestions on how to upgrade an older Fedora
>> system
>> and keep as many of the configurations as possible for the applications
>> that are being used.
>
> The recommendation is to go through successive upgrades one after the
> other. However, I am very doubtful that one of these will not break. I
> seem to recall that F18 or F19 was the one which broke upgrades (I think
> it was F19).
I'm aware of the recommendation to go through successive releases, the
problem is I can't even get to Fedora 17 because / and /usr are split into
two different file systems.
>
>> Currently the system is running Fedora 16 and there are at least two
>> things that are preventing me from successfully running fedup or the yum
>> upgrade.
>>
>> The first stumbling block is that system was installed with separate
>> partitions for /, /boot, /var, & /usr and I think that the separation of
>> / and /usr is my biggest issue.
>
> I don't see why this should be an issue in a clean install. Are you
> wanting to keep /usr because you installed programs here? You may consider
> moving files that you created to a separate directory inside your home
> partition and then pushing it back. One possibility is to partition the
> current /usr and then move the programs to that new partition and keep
> that one in a new install.
>
I would rather avoid a clean install if at all possible, of course I may
not have a choice if I want to upgrade.
The current recommendation (requirement?) is that / and /usr be the same
partition, I'm pretty sure the problem with /usr being its own partition
is the location of /usr/sbin and /usr/bin both of which aren't mounted
when the upgrade is attempted.
Yes, that's precisely the issue.
I came from the real old school where everything had its own
partition,
today this isn't the best way to do things and now I have a "broken"
system when it comes to upgrading.
>> The second issue is the system is setup with RAID1 on all partitions with
>> the bootloader (Grub ?) installed on both disks in the event of a disk
failure.
>
> I am not sure how RAID0 figures into this equation: I have not much
> knowledge of this, sorry.
I think there were some issues with using RAID on the boot partition but
I'm not positive.
Conversion from a separate / and /usr is fairly easy--provided your
current "/" filesystem is large enough to accommodate the /usr content.
Assuming that "/" is on /dev/md0 and "/usr" is on /dev/md1, after you
boot the live system in "rescue" mode:
1. Make sure you have two spots to mount this stuff on the live
system:
# mkdir /mnt/oldroot
# mkdir /mnt/oldusr
2. Mount the old "/" to "/mnt/oldroot", e.g.:
# mount /dev/md0 /mnt/oldroot
3. Mount the old "/usr" to "/mnt/oldusr":
# mount /dev/md1 /mnt/oldusr
4. Copy the entire /usr stuff to the old root partition:
# cp -a /mnt/oldusr/* /mnt/oldroot/usr
5. Once that's done, comment out the /usr mount by editing the
fstab on the old root partition:
# vi /mnt/oldroot/etc/fstab
(delete or comment out the mount for /usr)
That should do it. If you reboot the system, it should have been
converted over. Note that you haven't destroyed the old /usr partition.
If you need to revert, just boot up in rescue mode off the live system
again and:
1. Mount the old "/" at the normal rescue mode mountpoint:
# mount /dev/md0 /mnt/sysimage
2. Delete the CONTENT in the /usr directory on the old /
filesystem:
# rm -rf /mnt/sysimage/usr/*
3. Edit the old fstab and re-enable the /usr mount:
# vi /mnt/sysimage/etc/fstab
Reboot and everything should be back to what it was.
If you don't have enough root on "/" to accommodate the /usr content,
that's a different kettle of fish.
As to the issue of the boot loader on both disks of a RAID1, that has
to do with using a software RAID1. grub2 (as present on F22) is RAID
aware but does have a requirement that there be a 1MB space between the
MBR on the drives and the first partition (e.g. if you us a 512-byte
sector size, then the first partition must start on or above sector
2048). This space is used for the "core.img" file.
Note that when you install grub2, you must specify BOTH of the drives
involved in your RAID1. If you are only able to install to one of them
(say, /dev/sda), once the system is booted you can "grub-install
/dev/sdb" to put it on the second drive.
You're playing with fire here and it's really easy to get burnt to a
crisp! Before you do ANY of this, make damned well certain you have a
current backup of EVERYTHING and that that backup can, indeed, be
recovered from. Many people do backups but never test the recovery and
if you can't recover, then the backup is less than useless.
For bare-metal backup and recovery, I use Mondo Rescue to create DVD
ISO images and store them on a USB hard drive, but use whatever you
like. Just make sure it works.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks(a)alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 -
- -
- If it's stupid and it works...it ain't stupid! -
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3:08 p.m.
For the OP.
I think this is unsupportable because Fedora 17, 18, 19, 20 aren't
supported. And as mentioned, one of those moved from preupgrade to
fedup, and fedup is fundamentally flawed which is why it's going away
in Fedora 23. It's sufficiently fundamentally flawed in the edge case
scenario (i.e. not a simple default installation or one sufficiently
common that's known to work, which does NOT really include raid1 +
separate usr, I had lots of problems with this and fedup when I was
doing testing) that it's just not even worth attempting in my opinion.
The installer (Anaconda) should recognize all of the various parts
including the separate usr and raid1, and let you reuse what you want
and blow away what you don't want. It's been sufficiently long since
Fedora 16 that you should get new file systems for everything. The
installer enforces this for / although I'm not sure if it's enforced
for /usr. It's not enforced for /home.
Anything on Btrfs created more than a year ago should bite the bullet
and reformat. It's just a much more deterministic outcome that way.
Chris Murphy
6:13 a.m.
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 10:20:44 -0400, Jeffrey Ross wrote:
I'm looking for some suggestions on how to upgrade an older
Fedora system
and keep as many of the configurations as possible for the applications
that are being used.
Packages don't touch /home, so all that would be needed is to keep /home.
Or backup your user's files and restore them after an upgrade or after a
fresh installation.
As jumping from F16 to F22 could result in lots of surprises (and
upgrading from F16 to F17 to F18 ... to F22 would be tiresome), I would
always prefer a fresh installation, especially if you want to rethink your
partitioning. It would also be an opportunity to recreate the list of packages
you want to add to the default installation afterwards.
6:21 a.m.
Since i have been running on btrfs for some time now i have the option to install to a
fresh root subvolume, while reusing the existing swap and home. When i am certain i have
everything set up i can delete the old root subvolume. No repartitioning needed.
2. nov. 2015 1.13 p.m. skrev Michael Schwendt <mschwendt(a)gmail.com>:
On Fri, 30 Oct 2015 10:20:44 -0400, Jeffrey Ross wrote:
> I'm looking for some suggestions on how to upgrade an older Fedora system
> and keep as many of the configurations as possible for the applications
> that are being used.
Packages don't touch /home, so all that would be needed is to keep /home.
Or backup your user's files and restore them after an upgrade or after a
fresh installation.
As jumping from F16 to F22 could result in lots of surprises (and
upgrading from F16 to F17 to F18 ... to F22 would be tiresome), I would
always prefer a fresh installation, especially if you want to rethink your
partitioning. It would also be an opportunity to recreate the list of packages
you want to add to the default installation afterwards.
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7:47 a.m.
I'm looking for some suggestions on how to upgrade an older
Fedora system
and keep as many of the configurations as possible for the applications
that are being used.
Currently the system is running Fedora 16 and there are at least two
things that are preventing me from successfully running fedup or the yum
upgrade.
The first stumbling block is that system was installed with separate
partitions for /, /boot, /var, & /usr and I think that the separation of /
and /usr is my biggest issue.
The second issue is the system is setup with RAID1 on all partitions with
the bootloader (Grub ?) installed on both disks in the event of a disk
failure.
I would like to avoid a new/clean install (I know I can preserve /home) if
at all possible.
Any suggestions on how to proceed?
Thanks, Jeff
I think I'm going to just bite the bullet and do a fresh install while
preserving /home, I have enough space available on /home to backup of all
the other filesystems (at least temporarily) so I can retain copies of
whatever modifications I made in the past. Luckily for me / and /usr are
on adjoining physical partitions so I before reinstalling I can merge the
two partitions back together.
At least fdisk shows my partition table starting at 2048 so at least I'm
good there.
I'll have to look through the current install guidelines to make sure I'm
not breaking some cardinal rule but at this point I'm planning on
/boot - Raid1
/ - Raid1
/var - Raid1
/home - Raid1
swap - Raid1
What is the current recommendation for swap? I'm guessing it needs to be
at least the same size as physical memory. Years ago unix upon a system
crash would start writing the crash file at the beginning of the swap
partition and keep going until it was done, if swap was smaller than
physical memory you had a problem as the system would happily write over
the next partition.
-Jeff
8:33 a.m.
On 11/02/2015 02:47 PM, Jeffrey Ross wrote:
I think I'm going to just bite the bullet and do a fresh install
while
preserving /home,
I recommend to also backup /etc.
Otherwise you'd have additional efforts with restoring passwd/accounts,
ssl-keys, etc.
I'll have to look through the current install guidelines to make
sure I'm
not breaking some cardinal rule but at this point I'm planning on
/boot - Raid1
/ - Raid1
/var - Raid1
/home - Raid1
swap - Raid1
What is the current recommendation for swap? I'm guessing it needs to be
at least the same size as physical memory.
Primarily depends upon your actual
amount of memory.
On "big RAM" systems you probably don't need any on "small RAM"
systems
you probably will want some. How to define "small/big" depends largely
upon the footprint your typical style of usage imposes.
Years ago unix upon a system
crash would start writing the crash file at the beginning of the swap
partition and keep going until it was done, if swap was smaller than
physical memory you had a problem as the system would happily write over
the next partition.
IIRC, in the old days, the rule was twice the amount of RAM,
with the
reason being "suspend to disk". As diskspace is cheap these days, I am
still applying this rule.
Ralf
3091
days inactive
3098
days old
9 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Birger Monsen -
Chris Murphy -
Jack Craig -
Jeffrey Ross -
Michael Schwendt -
Ralf Corsepius -
Ranjan Maitra -
Rick Stevens