On Sat, Jun 05, 2004 at 12:18:43AM -0700, Craig White wrote: > On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 18:55, Michael P. Soulier wrote: > > On 04/06/04 Antti Aspinen said: > > > > > However I don't usually upgrade Linuxes and this is just one example why > > > not. I make allways a clean installation. I suggest to you when you > > > > I would just point out that Debian upgrades just fine. I think that > > Fedora should strive to meet that standard. > ---- > In my opinion, it definitely does. When you change sources and apt-get > dist upgrade on Debian, similar things happen. Just another data point: My primary system was upgraded from FC1 to FC2 last weekend, and although I have since rolled back to FC1, the upgrade went very weel (the rollback was due to some issues probably unrelated to the upgrade). I have had very good results with upgrades - this particular machine was originally installed with 8.0 and was upgraded through every RH and major FC release without incident. Other machines have upgrade histories back to RH 6.x. That being said, I do like to do full OS installs rather than upgrades when the machine being updated has little or no local customization (e.g. it's a network client, and the customization is simple or resides elsewhere). One large disclaimer on upgrades though: I *never* do one if I cannot roll it back to the previous known good release. While the process that I use it to complicated to detail in *this* email, it involves duplicating filesystems to an alternate LVM volume group and performing the upgrade on the copy, leaving the original installation untouched - but it requires giving some thought to upgrade issues at the time of the original install as well as good software and volume management practices, issues which are often overlooked on desktop installations. Using this technique, rolling back to the previous release is simple. If there's any interest, I'd be happy to publish a HOWTO detailing the technique (which works well for fresh installs too, BTW, as the old /etc et al can be mounted from the old install and configurations copied or merged). Experience has also taught me that mixing software management techniques is something to be generally avoided, and managed carefully when it can't. In other words, I use rpm/apt-get/yum to manage RPM packages from selected trusted sources, and generally avoid building from source when I can. When building from source is unavoidable, care is taken to not create conflicts - source-build software is installed outside the RPM directory space in /usr/local or /opt. This approach has served me well, but of course YMMV. It's worth pointing out that these issues are not releated to Fedora per se, nor even specific to Linux. Even the mighty M$ is not immune to upgrade issues arising from poor software management, etc. Personally, I always do a fresh install when dealing with M$ products. Too much legacy cruft and potential for conflicts are left behind during upgrades.
