Upgrading from F16 to F17 fails

[Andy Blanchard]

On 7 September 2012 23:28, JD <jd1008 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I wonder about /etc, because that's where so much conf is kept.
> But it is small enough to simply back it up to an external partition.
> The pain is in remembering all the apps for which conf files were
> modified. To address that, inserting a comment like
> # this is a modified conf file

into the conf file helps one to search for all conf files that were
> customized, and bring them back.
> Problem arises when new config vars are introduced in the newer
> release of the app, in which case one must integrate those as well.
>
> It just seems there is no automagical way to do upgrades :)
>

Trying to keep /etc/ while doing a clean install seems like a recipe for
problems to me.  In theory it should be OK and would probably work most of
the time, but it's fairly likely that when it doesn't the resultant
problems could be "interesting"...

Generally, there are only a few applications that I find I want to restore
the /etc/ configs for anyway, and the rest are easiest to setup on the fly
or are unchanged from the defaults.  If the version is unchanged, or only a
point release, then restoring the config file/directory and restarting has
always been good enough for me.  Major updates I generally read up on the
changes first so I have an idea of what I'm dealling with, then either
start with a diff of the config files and merge the new/changed settings in
or start over.

I think the last upgrade I did (F15 to F16) took me about 2 hours from
inserting the DVD to being back up and running with all configurations
restored, so not a major headache.  Not as slick as a typical Windows or
OSX upgrade though, so there's definitely some room for improvement here.

-- 
Andy

*The only person to have all his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe*
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