Jeremiah Foster wrote:
I too am thinking of upgrading. I am using Fedora Core 1. I use over the network, running X on my local machine and then logging in with ssh -X. I use the tools like gimp and sodipodi which need later versions of certain libraries to be upgraded. What is the best approach for me? I have downloaded the FC 3 cds but since I cannot access the installation GUI (can't login over the network at boot time,) what approach shoud use?
Should I just upgrade the kernel and use apt-get to update various libraries needed or does one need to re-install the entire operating system from scratch?
The recommended way of upgrading a Fedora Core system is by using the CDs. The anaconda installer knows how to handle the various tasks required for a proper upgrade, including the conversion from a static /dev system to a dynamic /dev using udev.
Having said that, I have remotely upgraded several FC1 systems by logging in via SSH and using yum to upgrade the system. This method is not recommended, because it can result in a system that won't boot. On one of my systems I also had yum hang after it had upgraded all the packages, but not yet removed the old package names from the RPM database. So after a reboot, I had to manually find the duplicated package entries, and use "rpm --erase --justdb <exact package name and version>" to fix the RPM database.
Now that I've warned you enough, if you still want to do the yum upgrade, then you'll have to do the following:
1. First, install the kernel package from FC2 on your FC1 system. Yes, I said FC _two_ intentionally. This is a 2.6 kernel, and you need to be running a 2.6 kernel before attempting to upgrade to FC3. Once this FC2 kernel is installed, edit your grub.conf file to boot this as the default, and reboot your system.
2. Now that you've got a 2.6 kernel running, modify your yum configuration to point to the FC3 repositories, and follow the advice given in the FC3 release notes, under the udev section, about doing a live upgrade with yum. You need to follow the steps very carefully, and as long as you do it carefully and don't miss any step, you will be able to go directly from FC1 to FC3, without having to use the CDs.
One other important thing I should mention, which is not in the release notes, is that you should make the system quiescent during the live upgrade! This means, you should stop all the services, except the essential ones. So, basically shut down everything except SSH, to avoid any issues while the upgrade is occuring.
As I said, I have used this method for several upgrades, and with the one exception where the RPM database was messed up, I had no problems.
