What are the limitations of preupgrade

[Bill Davidsen]

Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Preupgrade used to be quite limited in capability, and restricted to a single
> version upgrade at a time. I have some systems I would rather not upgrade by
> hand if possible, but they need to go from fc13 to fc17, and I'm sure doing it
> insteps would take more effort on my part than a single step and some fixup. I
> noted that preupgrade offers to try to go to to fc17 in a single step, but it's
> not obvious if it's kidding me or itself.
>
> Downtime should be minimized, so it's worth at least considering. Any experience?
>
The bottom line appears to be 13->15->17, at most two versions at a time. And 
it's going to be really ugly, because GNOME went away, or at any rate the name 
was jacked up and something utterly different put in, so I will have to migrate 
users to the nearest thing, XFCE.

I think the easy way is to drop in an SSD for root and clean install, then 
recustomize and mount the pieces. Maybe plug in a spare 8TB RAID on the eSATA 
and take another backup, I have two remote backups, but restoring over Gbit 
network will take way too long if I must.

Thanks for the pointers, it would appear that changing the network device names 
and putting something totally different in while still calling it GNOME is going 
to make the upgrade, or any automated upgrade past the changes, challenging on 
anything more than a simple desktop.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot