James,

Your comment about package manager (yum etc) not differentiating between 4.2 and 4.8 is the reason why I was asking the original question. If I just upgrade it will patch it up all the way to 4.8 which I am trying to avoid (trying to get least changes as possible).However Kwan's idea would work, I was hoping that I was wrong and you could tell up2date/yum etc to only upgrade one minor release or only patch up to a specific release and not above that.

thanks Sheraz

________________________________ From: James Hogarth james.hogarth@gmail.com To: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org Sent: Fri, May 14, 2010 4:01:43 AM Subject: Re: [CentOS] upgrading to a minor release 4.1 to 4.2

On 14 May 2010 05:37, sheraz naz sheraznaz@yahoo.com wrote:

Hi,

I need to upgrade a system running 4.1 to 4.2, but before I do I want to list out all the packages that will be updated/installed/removed. I can run up2date -l to get a list of updates but does that show packages that need to be installed and removed as well or just the updates?

Second, how would I go about upgrading 4.1 to 4.2 instead of 4.8 (i.e. latest update).

Unfortunately I don't have access to centos 4.x at the moment.and googling just centos 4.1 to 4.2 is not bringing up relevant information.

Thanks Sheraz

---

CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

One comment and one question.....

Comment) The .x is just a baseline at the time but yum/centos doesn't have the concept of .x minor versions as such (to my understanding) but rather it is a baseline change with possibly some new/changed aspects (such as introduction of postgres84 in the 5.5 case or ext4 tech preview in 5.2 or something). As such trying to stay on an old .x will possibly result in missed security patches and so on as those parts of the mirrors potentially might not get updated. Rather than Centos 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 3.1,3.2,5.1 and so on from a package mangement (read yum) perspective it is pretty much centos 3, 4, 5 and soon (ish) 6. This would be why in the centos-announce mailing list, as an example, errata are not referred to as centos 4.3, centos 5.1 and so on but there just centos 3, centos 4 or centos 5.

Question) 4.2 was a long... long... time ago - why not move to the current centos 4 baseline of 4.8 if you are unable to upgrade to the next major centos release (5)?

BTW someone please correct me on the comment if I am mistaken.... but I recall a discussion similar to this last week over complaints of EPEL tracking rhel and needing 5.5 for some packages but centos being at a 5.4 baseline still....

James _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

On 14 May 2010 13:51, Kwan Lowe kwan.lowe@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 12:37 AM, sheraz naz sheraznaz@yahoo.com wrote:

...

Hi,

I need to upgrade a system running 4.1 to 4.2, but before I do I want to list out all the packages that will be updated/installed/removed. I can run up2date -l to get a list of updates but does that show packages that need to be installed and removed as well or just the updates?

Second, how would I go about upgrading 4.1 to 4.2 instead of 4.8 (i.e. latest update).

OK, ignoring the "why??", the approach would be to get the 4.2 DVD ISO then mount it as a package repository. Point your system to that repository then run the update. _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Some relevant information...

from http://mirror.centos.org/centos-4/4.2/readme

This directory (and version of CentOS) is depreciated. For normal users, you should use /4/ and not /4.3/ in your path. Please see this FAQ concerning the CentOS release scheme:

http://www.centos.org/modules/smartfaq/faq.php?faqid=34

If you know what you are doing, and absolutely want to remain at the 4.3 level, go to http://vault.centos.org/ for packages.

So you *could* use http://vault.centos.org/4.2/ for your repository information and get updates to the baseline of 4.2 and no further.... but then you will be missing any bug or security fixes for the last 4 years give or take.

James

On 5/14/2010 12:56 PM, sheraz naz wrote:

Thanks guys, this would work. FYI, as to "why", well it is a mission critical system that has been up and running for a while (on 4.1) but now we to update it to minimum 4.2 to meet some requirements, so we want to keep the changes to a minimum. As for security issues, the way it is setup currently that is not an issue, however it will be soon replaced with latest version of 5.x

You do know that changes within the minor-number updates are minimal anyway, don't you? There have been a few notable exceptions in the 5.x line, but in general RHEL (and thus Centos) rarely has behavior or compatibility affecting changes in updates. Unless you've already tested and found something unusual wrong with the up to date 4.x, I'd say you are taking most of the risk to update to something older (which almost by definition has known bugs) and not getting the benefit of having the known bugs fixed.

Thanks, that might work out too. Hehe, about the second one, it is the same old tried story, I and other linux admins joined recently and fixing up stuff slowly. The systems we could touch, are already getting patched from our local repos (which never existed before), however there is too much work (qa team has backlog) etc involved when patching some of the mc systems instead we found it easier to duplicate the system with 5.4 but its been sitting for a few months waiting for qa team :(

If you scared of centos 4.1, we also have some gentoo systems :( they will be replaced by CentOS 5.x systems as well soon*

________________________________ From: Ross Walker rswwalker@gmail.com To: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org Cc: CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org Sent: Fri, May 14, 2010 8:52:57 AM Subject: Re: [CentOS] upgrading to a minor release 4.1 to 4.2

On May 14, 2010, at 8:51 AM, Kwan Lowe kwan.lowe@gmail.com wrote:

On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 12:37 AM, sheraz naz sheraznaz@yahoo.com wrote:

...

Hi,

I need to upgrade a system running 4.1 to 4.2, but before I do I want to list out all the packages that will be updated/installed/removed. I can run up2date -l to get a list of updates but does that show packages that need to be installed and removed as well or just the updates?

Second, how would I go about upgrading 4.1 to 4.2 instead of 4.8 (i.e. latest update).

OK, ignoring the "why??", the approach would be to get the 4.2 DVD ISO then mount it as a package repository. Point your system to that repository then run the update.

Or edit your repo file and point /4/ to /4.2/ on the archive server.

The .X releases are service packs, I understand wanting to delay the upgrade until further testing, but 4 years, damn, what have you guys been doing all this time?

-Ross

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