On Fri, June 10, 2005 at 3:20 pm "Botond Kardos" <Botond.Kardos@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, > I have an old machine running as a firewall. It's basically an RH9 > installation with some custom-made packages (kernel, openssh, few > others). If I revert my system to standard RH9 is it possible to upgrade > it to FC3 or FC4? Is this upgrade possible without a CD (for example > boot-floppy + NFS or FTP server)? > My main reason for the intention to upgrade is the fear of rootkits. > AFAIK FC3 and its targeted SELinux policy gives the feeling of safety > regarding rootkits and other privilege escalation vulnerabilities. Botond, There was a major change in the required size of the swap partition with the introduction of FC3 and the 2.6 kernel. Under FC4 you will need a swap partition twice the size of your system memory up to a max of about 2GB. Very few FC9 systems had swap partitions large enough for FC3. For that and many other reasons, you will avoid a LOT of problems if you simply back up your data and do a fresh install of FC4. It's becoming increasingly difficult to install Fedora or any other major Linux distribution without using a CD. The reason is that the 2.6 kernel is simply too large to fit on a floppy. There have been some recent posts to this list that point to work-arounds that start with MS-DOS floppies and loadlin, but they all sound a bit tweaky for most folks. Do you have the option of putting a CD in your firewall box just for FC4 installation, then removing it before putting it back into production service? These days even an NFS or FTP install starts with a CD boot-up. --Doc Savage Fairview Heights, IL
