Upgrade process for Fedora?

BruceG griffisb at bellsouth.net
Fri Oct 3 19:46:09 UTC 2003


On Friday 03 October 2003 13:33, Jef Spaleta wrote:
> griffisb wrote:
> > I'm considering installing Fedora on a new laptop and wanted to know
> > what the upgrade process is. I am not familiar with Red Hat, so
> > familiarity with Fedora is nill.
>
> Right now the only thing available are TEST releases of Fedora Core.
> It's very important to recognize that running TEST/BETA releases comes
> with inherent risks. Once you install a test/beta release the
> expectation that it will upgrade cleanly to the next official release is
> unfounded. The expectation that a test2->test3 upgrade will run smoothly
> is also unfounded. You have to think of the goals involved with the test
> release process. The point of the test release process is to make it so
> that you can upgrade from previous official releases to newer official
> releases. If you upgrade from official->test  or test->test or
> test->official, then you should be expecting breakage...becuase the
> engineering goals for the test releases are focused on making
> official->official upgrades smooth.
>
>
> I do have some experience with Mandrake, SuSE and Debian,though.
>
> > If I install Severn (Test 2?), how would I upgrade to Severn (Test 3?)
>
> when it comes out?
> Better question...is upgrading from test2 to test3 WORTH testing?
> The point of the test releases is to do testing....the upgrade path that
> NEEDS testing is from rhl9,8,7.x->Fedora Core 1. Test3 will potential
> have packaging fixes that make it impossible to cleanly upgrade from
> test2 to test3. If you upgrade from test2 to test3...will the packagers
> care much for your bugreports on the problems? My understanding that
> making sure test2->test3 upgrades work correctly is a low priority in
> the infinite list of things that should be working better.
>
> > Would I need to download the ISOs and burn them to CD again? Or is
> > there a Debian-like apt-get update, apt-get upgrade?
>
> There are very clever ways to attempt to upgrade from test2->test3. And
> they all fall in the "works for me" category sometimes. But if there is
> a problem, you very well might not get much love from the bugzilla
> trackers on the issues you have, becuase its outside the expected
> upgrade path.
>
> > When General Availability comes out in November, would I be burning
> > another set of CD's?
>
> general rule....there is no expected clean upgrade path from beta/test
> releases. It can be done, it will most likely not be done as cleanly as
> an official release->official release upgrade path. This is one of the
> risks beta testers have to except as part of the process. The goal of
> beta testing..is to not make beta testing easy...but to make official
> release upgrading easy. Burn development to to ensure that test releases
> will upgrade clean can very much get in the way of the technical
> measures that need to happen to make sure official releases upgrade
> well. Not all solutions are win-win, works for all situations,
> solutions. If something has to be done to make an official->official
> upgrade work well, at the cost of test->official upgrade...so be
> it...the test/beta installers are told that test/beta releases are prone
> to breakage...upgrading from them is no different.
>
> > Would it be expecting too much to install Fedora, burn CD's as it goes
> > GA, then ship and talk her through the upgrade process? Since Fedora >
>
> is based on RH 9.0 (if I read right), could I assume RH9.0 User Guides >
> would be appropriate?
>
> this is  TEST release...if she isn't competent enough to be an active
> participant in the testing process...submitting bugreports and giving
> feedback to developers about those bugs...she should NOT be trying to
> use the fedora core 0.94 test release on a day to day basis. There is an
> inherent expectation in the test/beta release that something could
> serious break, and the people running the test/beta release better
> understand that, and be prepared to give feedback on the bugs they find.
> Wait for the official release of Fedora Core.
> -jef

Thank you. While the information isn't exactly what I wanted to hear - it is 
completely understandable. Think I'll wait for General Availability on this 
one. It will save me a lot of headaches, and I certainly don't want my 
sister's first experience with Linux to be on a test version.

See you guys (and gals) in November!
Bruce





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