Upgrade vs Reinstall

[Gordon Keehn]

Sean O Sullivan wrote:

> Rick Lim wrote:
>
>>
>> Tim Holmes wrote:
>>
>>  
>>
>>>> Good Morning All!!!
>>>
>>>
>>>> As we look toward the end of the academic year, I am beginning the
>>>> process of planning the IT projects for the summer.  One of the >major
>>>> projects that I have in mind is to convert all of our FC2 boxes to 
>>>> >FC3
>>>> -- I have about 6 FC2 servers in various roles around the school.  
>>>> >What
>>>> I am wondering is if there is a proper upgrade path, or if it is 
>>>> >better
>>>> to back up the data and start over from scratch?
>>>
>>>
>>>> If a RELIABLE upgrade path is available, can someone please point 
>>>> >me to
>>>> the docs etc (since this would be the first Linux upgrade that I >have
>>>> done, a step by step cook book style doc would be real helpful)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>> I did similar upgrade from FC2 => 3, on various servers, it was a 
>>> case of inserting FC3 cd, booting off cd, and then when anaconda 
>>> loads >gives you choice to upgrade.
>>> It took about 1-1.5 hours to do it, and afterwards all worked 
>>> without problems, there is small issue with apache I believe, but 
>>> once you update via your package manager it should be resolved.
>>
>>
>
>> On another system I did a FC2 -> FC3 via CD and that was 100% 
>> successful.
>
>
> In regards to upgrading ... usually the CD upgrade is best way & you 
> will usually have to do a 'X' update afterwards which will probably 
> fix things (as you have PACKAGE_NAME_FC2 and must be updated to 
> PACKAGE_NAME_FC3, so that can produce some oddities, as sometimes the 
> package for FC2 is higher version than FC3's, so matter of waiting).
>
>
    I've upgraded from RH9->FC1->FC2->FC3 from the CDs.  The only 
problem I've had each time is getting APT / SYNAPTIC upgraded to the new 
repositories.  When I initially bring up synaptic, it complains of 
multiple duplicate packages, and it takes a few cycles to get everything 
cleaned up.  Also, I find that while I can download the necessary RPMs 
to update apt itself to the new release, they can't be installed from 
apt (bootstrap problems?) so I then have to go into the apt cache folder 
and install the apt RPMs manually.  I've never tried upgrading using 
apt-get, but maybe I'll try that out when FC4 is released.  Problem is 
while that should upgrade existing packages I'm not sure what it'll do 
with any new packages that are in the new release.  At least if I have 
the CDs I have a base-level that I can work from.
    Cheers,
Gordon Keehn