Seems like there should be a way to perform an upgrade without booting from a CDROM. In my case, several of the systems that I operate/maintain are at remote locations. I like to keep them fairly up to date, however I do not wish to travel to each site every year or so to upgrade the system manually (not to mention the downtime associated with the upgrade). I am trying to come up with a way upgrade them via RPM updates only. There has to be a way to deal with this. All of the systems in question are base installs with a few 3rd party packages, so I do not really have the need for desktop related utilities, or large quatities of users. In fact I am only using something like 199 system packages (RPM) during the install (not including the 3rd party applications). The only package that, based upon my experience, would give me a problem might be kernel updates, or packages that are directly related the kernel. I have completed RPM kernel upgrades in the past with great success. Though I am cautiious about RPM kernel upgrades, I am confident in dealing with them. It seems to me that the progression to a new release version is dependant upon the previous release version, therefore it seems logical that an upgrade path from one release version to the next should be viable. I do no believe that I am the first person to think up something like this. Thank You for the input! BAK >Another solution would be to download and burn the boot.iso and download >the 4 other iso's to one of your machines. Put the iso's in an nfs share >or a http or ftp folder. Boot each machine from the boot iso and type >"linux text" at the install prompt. This will give you the option of >installing over the network. This way you only download from the >internet once and you can install them via the local network which will >be much quicker. Personally, I would perform a fresh install instead of >an upgrade. There were a few issues that came up with the change to the >new kernel and x server. If your /home directory is on a separate >partition you can keep all your settings from your previous >installation. Just don't format the partition and you can add the >user(s) account(s) after installation. Good luck!
