So far I've had very good luck with preupgrade for 12 to 14 and 13 to 14 systems. There's one annoyance that is causing me some headache. I have a couple of systems that are headless and remote that I'd like to do a preupgrade on but I can't seem to get things started without some local keyboard interaction.
I need let preupgrade and/or anaconda know that it's supposed to use eth0 (some systems have more than one NIC). And I need to specify the language and keyboard layouts from within preupgrade and or the grub entry that launches the upgrade.
Currently I run preupgrade and then manually tweak /boot/grub/grub.conf to load the 14 installer automatically with a vnc session waiting for a connection. But this only happens after I locally tell the system to use English, a US keyboard and (sometimes) eth0. It's causing me to hold off on upgrading some systems until I can prove that I can get the 14 installer to launch all the way into the VNC session being ready with no local interaction necessary.
On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Steve Berg sberg@mississippi.com wrote:
So far I've had very good luck with preupgrade for 12 to 14 and 13 to 14 systems. There's one annoyance that is causing me some headache. I have a couple of systems that are headless and remote that I'd like to do a preupgrade on but I can't seem to get things started without some local keyboard interaction.
I need let preupgrade and/or anaconda know that it's supposed to use eth0 (some systems have more than one NIC). And I need to specify the language and keyboard layouts from within preupgrade and or the grub entry that launches the upgrade.
Currently I run preupgrade and then manually tweak /boot/grub/grub.conf to load the 14 installer automatically with a vnc session waiting for a connection. But this only happens after I locally tell the system to use English, a US keyboard and (sometimes) eth0. It's causing me to hold off on upgrading some systems until I can prove that I can get the 14 installer to launch all the way into the VNC session being ready with no local interaction necessary.
Maybe I'm missing something:
From a computer with ssh and an X-server:
$ssh -X 192.168.xxx.yyy $me@192.168.xxx.yyy: su #root@192.168.xxx.yyy: preupgrade
Robert.
Robert Myers rbmyersusa@gmail.com writes:
On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Steve Berg sberg@mississippi.com wrote:
So far I've had very good luck with preupgrade for 12 to 14 and 13 to 14 systems. There's one annoyance that is causing me some headache. I have a couple of systems that are headless and remote that I'd like to do a preupgrade on but I can't seem to get things started without some local keyboard interaction.
I need let preupgrade and/or anaconda know that it's supposed to use eth0 (some systems have more than one NIC). And I need to specify the language and keyboard layouts from within preupgrade and or the grub entry that launches the upgrade.
Currently I run preupgrade and then manually tweak /boot/grub/grub.conf to load the 14 installer automatically with a vnc session waiting for a connection. But this only happens after I locally tell the system to use English, a US keyboard and (sometimes) eth0. It's causing me to hold off on upgrading some systems until I can prove that I can get the 14 installer to launch all the way into the VNC session being ready with no local interaction necessary.
Maybe I'm missing something:
One some computers preupgraded needs handholding after the first reboot. In my case 3 of the 6 computer upgradede from f13 to f14 asked me to acknowledge the network settings. I might addd that it had guessed the the settings correctly, it just wanted me to confirm them (eth0, dhcp for ipv4, and the standard RFC automatic config for ipv6).
-wolfgang
On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 5:40 PM, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wolfgang.rupprecht@gmail.com wrote:
Robert Myers rbmyersusa@gmail.com writes:
On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Steve Berg sberg@mississippi.com wrote:
So far I've had very good luck with preupgrade for 12 to 14 and 13 to 14 systems. There's one annoyance that is causing me some headache. I have a couple of systems that are headless and remote that I'd like to do a preupgrade on but I can't seem to get things started without some local keyboard interaction.
I need let preupgrade and/or anaconda know that it's supposed to use eth0 (some systems have more than one NIC). And I need to specify the language and keyboard layouts from within preupgrade and or the grub entry that launches the upgrade.
Currently I run preupgrade and then manually tweak /boot/grub/grub.conf to load the 14 installer automatically with a vnc session waiting for a connection. But this only happens after I locally tell the system to use English, a US keyboard and (sometimes) eth0. It's causing me to hold off on upgrading some systems until I can prove that I can get the 14 installer to launch all the way into the VNC session being ready with no local interaction necessary.
Maybe I'm missing something:
One some computers preupgraded needs handholding after the first reboot. In my case 3 of the 6 computer upgradede from f13 to f14 asked me to acknowledge the network settings. I might addd that it had guessed the the settings correctly, it just wanted me to confirm them (eth0, dhcp for ipv4, and the standard RFC automatic config for ipv6).
I just completed FC13->FC14 on a remote machine without touching the remote keyboard. Maybe the fact that there was a keyboard physically attached made the difference, but I suspect that something else--VNC, maybe--is causing the problem.
Once the machine was rebooted, I just ssh'd into the machine, which is now running FC14.
Robert.
On 11/06/2010 12:34 AM, Robert Myers wrote:
I just completed FC13->FC14 on a remote machine without touching the remote keyboard. Maybe the fact that there was a keyboard physically attached made the difference, but I suspect that something else--VNC, maybe--is causing the problem.
If the /boot partition is too small wired network access is needed after the reboot. Then you need to tell which NIC to use before the the upgrade starts.
Mogens
Meant to send this to the list in case any one is curious about possible solutions.
On 11/05/2010 03:39 PM, Robert Myers wrote:
Maybe I'm missing something:
From a computer with ssh and an X-server:
$ssh -X 192.168.xxx.yyy $me@192.168.xxx.yyy: su #root@192.168.xxx.yyy: preupgrade
Robert.
That works just fine to start preupgrade. It doesn't work for all the work to be done after the next reboot.
To reboot into anaconda and the upgrade you have to either be at the console or you have to make changes in the grub.conf so the system won't boot into the old kernel. Once you change that and it boots into anaconda it may ask which NIC to use if you have more than one. That selection is usually made at the console. So for a headless remote system you're kind of screwed. Same thing goes for selecting language and keyboard layout, they need to be set from grub.conf because if not set anaconda wants you to specify before VNC loads up and is available.
I think I figured most of it out just a short time ago.
For the network: adding "ksdevice=eth0" or "ksdevice=${mac address}" or "ksdevice=link" seems to satisfy that question in a multiple NIC computer. I used "ksdevice=link" because most of the systems I'm working with only have one active link. But there's some systems that have two or more active links but only one that can be used for the upgrade. I plan to use the mac address version for those.
Keyboard and language I was able to figure it out from a couple of other systems that I recently upgraded at the console by reading the /root/anaconda-ks.cfg file for those keyword value pairs.
-
Mogens Kjaer -
Robert Myers -
Steve Berg -
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht