Clean Installs are Remarkable

[mike cloaked]

On Thu, Dec 22, 2011 at 6:24 PM, Joe Zeff <joe at zeff.us> wrote:
> On 12/22/2011 02:31 AM, mike cloaked wrote:
>>
>> the almost inevitable
>> problems that have come from the upgrade of an older system.
>
>
> And I've been doing upgrades for years and this is the first time I've ever
> had the slightest bit of trouble.  What "almost inevitable problems" are you
> referring to

It depends on what changes in a variety of packages in the new system
have been made and how well the upgrade has gone.  Of course there is
more than one way to do so - yum upgrade or preupgrade route.  I have
done yum upgrades on a system where there was difficult direct access
and it was "easier" to upgrade than try to gain access to clean
install.

However I have found selinux context issues and at other times
dependency issues with yum upgrades - even with fn to fn+1. I have to
admit I have only done yum upgrades and not used pre-upgrade mainly
due to the difficulties I have seen reported on the list.

I have also done a yum upgrade leading to a non-bootable system that I
ended up clean installing as it was quicker than trying to diagnose
what had gone wrong with the upgrade.

Since the problems I had with that route I abandonned trying and stuck
with clean installs - and not had any problems since - the last one I
did was a progressive upgrade via yum from f11 to f14 changing by one
version at a time - and resolving all the dep issues and selinux
issues along the way - it took ages but on that system I did not have
easy direct clean install access since I was connected remotely. It
did work but I balked at moving to f15 - eventually that machine was
taken out of service and I replaced its functions with a new machine.

Of course others may largely have had no problems with ugrades and
maybe I was just the one unlucky one!  Anyway with all the QA testing
on recent versions as well as the QA testing of the upgrade path
perhaps my experience of it is simply outdated.


-- 
mike c