Clean Installs are Remarkable

[mike cloaked]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 1:34 AM, Joel Rees <joel.rees at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Fedora User <fedoradch at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:04:00 +0900
>> Joel Rees <joel.rees at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I generally don't do install from DVD because there will always be the
>>> first yum update after the install, to kill a bit of time. I use the
>>
>> Actually, you can enable the update repo with the dvd install. The
>> installation will then proceed from the media where possible and yum
>> when necessary. Thus the newly installed Fedora is already updated.
>
> Well, now that you mention it, I think that's the default these days.
> It's been so long since I installed from DVD, I'd forgotten.
>
> However, on a 1M ADSL connection, downloading the netinstall saves a
> lot of download time. That'll be important for people whose ISPs are
> bandwidth-capped, too.

These considerations work for a one-off install - however if you
possess 6 or 8 or 10 machines all of which will be moved to the newer
system then downloading all the packages each time on each machine no
longer makes sense - what I have done in the past a number of times is
to download and install on the first machine - and then set up
mock-pungi to build a new DVD install iso using all fully updated
packages - that way the next machine "upgrade" is external-network
independent for a clean install using the up to date DVD install iso,
and once the install is complete you already have a near fully up to
date system with only a few packages to update from the repos.   If I
then do further installs more than a few weeks after the rebuilt iso
file then I will build again to create more up to date "spin"..... yes
it does mean a learning curve to know how to do a "re-spin" build. But
once that is set up then re-running it is simplicity itself.

So all in all the approach that optimises the system upgrades does
depend on how many machines are involved - having a fully up to date
DVD iso for clean installs is valuable when "upgrading" say half a
dozen systems - doing them all as yum upgrades will not only involve
time but also multiple sets of file downloads - if you have a fast and
unlimited broadband connection perhaps you don't care how much data
you download - nut not everyone is in that lucky position! Using this
approach can save time "overall" across the collection of machines
needing to be upgraded.

Just another consideration to add to the way people plan these things.

-- 
mike c