William L. Maltby wrote:
Got a wild hair this A.M. and decided to inundate my two brain cells. "Man yum" includes this:
update If run without any packages, update will update every currently installed package. ... assumed to be a shell glob and any matches are then installed.
If the --obsoletes flag is present yum will include package obsoletes in its calculations - this makes it better for distro- version changes, for example: upgrading from somelinux 8.0 to somelinux 9.Hmmm. Cell number 2 doesn't forget much. I recall several admonitions that major upgrade should take the form of a new install. E.g. CentOS 3* to CentOS 4*. The paragraph above *seems* to indicate that a major upgrade might be doable? Moreover, it prompts the questions:
- "What are the downsides, if any?"
- "Has anybody tried it recently?"
- "Have any results to report?"
No pressing need, just curious.
yum will upgrade pkgs, but not all pkgs like that - eg. moving from kernel2.4 to 2.6 the 'centos way' - moving from devfs to udev, major python + rpm upgrade in itself.
check list history from early 2005, this move from centos3 -> centos4 was documented and thrashed out a few times.
plus, packages change - not everything from el3 made it to el4 - and what about non core installed pkgs and install from source pkgs!