[CentOS] I see 5.3 ISO images on the mirrors

[Ross Walker]

On Mar 31, 2009, at 7:57 PM, Gilbert Sebenste <sebenste at weather.admin.niu.edu 
 > wrote:

> On Tue, 31 Mar 2009, Lanny Marcus wrote:
>
>>> You don't need to change anything.  'yum update' will update things,
>>> within a given major release (eg 4.x or 5.x).  It will happen
>>> automagically.  Going from 4.x to 5.x requires using the installer  
>>> (eg
>>> the ISOs and a reboot with the installer CD/DVD). I don't know if  
>>> it is
>>> possible (or advisable) to do a major release update with yum.
>>
>> Maybe possible, but usually/always strongly discouraged, by upstream
>> and the CentOS team, to upgrade from one major release to another.
>> Best to BACKUP and install fresh.
>
> I agree. I was with Redhat starting with 6, and left after Fedora 9  
> got too restrictive with things. I have done upgrades, and it wasn't  
> pretty, between major releases. Going from CentOS 5.2 to 5.3 is most  
> worthy of doing a backup, no matter what.
>
>> The caution about first updating glibc (?) is important. I recall  
>> from
>> the  update to 5.2, there is a difference, between "yum upgrade" and
>> "yum update". I believe "yum upgrade" is a better way to go from 5.2
>> to 5.3.    *BACKUP*, read the Release Notes and then you are ready to
>> roll. Probably the standard CentOS Repos that you have from the
>> original install will do it.
>
> OK, sounds good. Thanks, everyone!

Just to clarify for others reading this, going from 5.2 to 5.3 (or any  
point release) is NOT considered a major upgrade (unlike going from 4  
to 5 which is), so doing a backup, clean install and restore is NOT  
the recommended procedure.

Just perform a straight yum upgrade.

You should be backing up your personal/business data anyways, but an  
extra one right before any upgrade is good practice. Don't bother with  
the standard system executables, just the data and configs.

-Ross