Greetings,
A friend of mine is running 3.3
He asked what I thought about going to 4.4
I imagine it is best to backup and fresh install and migrate old configs and data
What is the wisdom on the list
I remember going from beta 3 to 3 a long time ago.
Anyone ever upgrade from 3.x to 4.x without problem and how so?
I didn't see a lot on the www other than some apt-get info
Thanks in advance
- rh
-- Robert - Abba Communications Computer & Internet Services (509) 624-7159 - www.abbacomm.net
On 04/01/07, R Lists06 lists06@abbacomm.net wrote:
A friend of mine is running 3.3 He asked what I thought about going to 4.4
I imagine it is best to backup and fresh install and migrate old configs and data What is the wisdom on the list I remember going from beta 3 to 3 a long time ago. Anyone ever upgrade from 3.x to 4.x without problem and how so? I didn't see a lot on the www other than some apt-get info
We went from various RH9 and earlier and FC3 and earlier builds straight to WBEL/CentOS 4 and in every case backed-up, rebuilt the box from scratch then pieced configs back together as much as possible in keeping with OS defaults, trying to fit in to the RHEL way.
I think I recall from previous similar threads that people *have* upgraded from 3 to 4 but the general concensus was that if you can, you should rebuild from scratch.
The main benefit being any configuration gotchas will be apparent straight away as you're configuring each specific aspect of your/their system.
Will.
Will McDonald wrote:
We went from various RH9 and earlier and FC3 and earlier builds straight to WBEL/CentOS 4 and in every case backed-up, rebuilt the box from scratch then pieced configs back together as much as possible in keeping with OS defaults, trying to fit in to the RHEL way.
I think I recall from previous similar threads that people *have* upgraded from 3 to 4 but the general concensus was that if you can, you should rebuild from scratch.
The main benefit being any configuration gotchas will be apparent straight away as you're configuring each specific aspect of your/their system.
Will.
I just spent 2-3 weeks migrating our application to CentOS 4.4 from RH9.
We had all kinds of fun stuff to deal with, like porting a newer version of yum (and all it's dependencies except sqllite :P) to support our custom RPM of python24, and we're still doing a little bit of work porting 4 custom apache modules to the 2.0 API because glibc23 doesn't play nice with apache 1.3.xx, and there's a host of custom RPMS (about 90) that we had to rebuild to play nicely with CentOS 4.4, but all in all, it went pretty smooth.
Attempt to do this in place on a live system? Now that's plain crazy. The only OS I know of that does an in-place upgrade for a major version number is FreeBSD via cvsup, and it's not all that hairy, but you may have to recompile your few non-stock components.
Peter
On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 07:03 -0800, R Lists06 wrote: <snip>
Anyone ever upgrade from 3.x to 4.x
Yes, with anaconda and the "upgradeany" option. Upgrades across major kernel and glibc versions are at best very difficult with yum/apt-get. The most likely result of attempts to upgrade across major versions with package management tools is a broken system.
without problem
Not really. Expect lots of left-over orphan packages and problems with system and end-user configurations.
and how so?
Use "rpm -qa --last" to find packages that pre-date the upgrade and deal with them by removal and/or forced/manual updates. Look for all the *.rpm* files in /etc/... and reconcile differences with current versions of config files. Fix numerous user GUI/application problems.
Or [highly recommended], back up config files and user files to accessible media and do a clean install. Use the backup as model/example to configure the new system. Create new user home directories and selectively copy/link stuff as required from the backup. Keeping old GNOME/KDE configurations in place is guaranteed to cause problems. I like to keep the old installation on-line and still bootable and accessible and do a fresh install on a separate hard disk (or at least on separate partitions) and be able to boot back to the previous version as a fall-back.
Phil
On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 16:00 -0500, Phil Schaffner wrote:
On Thu, 2007-01-04 at 07:03 -0800, R Lists06 wrote:
<snip> > Anyone ever upgrade from 3.x to 4.x
Yes, with anaconda and the "upgradeany" option. Upgrades across major kernel and glibc versions are at best very difficult with yum/apt-get. The most likely result of attempts to upgrade across major versions with package management tools is a broken system.
without problem
Not really. Expect lots of left-over orphan packages and problems with system and end-user configurations.
and how so?
Use "rpm -qa --last" to find packages that pre-date the upgrade and deal with them by removal and/or forced/manual updates. Look for all the *.rpm* files in /etc/... and reconcile differences with current versions of config files. Fix numerous user GUI/application problems.
Or [highly recommended], back up config files and user files to accessible media and do a clean install. Use the backup as model/example to configure the new system. Create new user home directories and selectively copy/link stuff as required from the backup. Keeping old GNOME/KDE configurations in place is guaranteed to cause problems. I like to keep the old installation on-line and still bootable and accessible and do a fresh install on a separate hard disk (or at least on separate partitions) and be able to boot back to the previous version as a fall-back.
Phil
I want to second Phil's advise and exactly what I would recommend.
Phil Schaffner wrote:
directories and selectively copy/link stuff as required from the backup. Keeping old GNOME/KDE configurations in place is guaranteed to cause problems.
??
My current GNOME & KDE settings (on FC3 crossed with Nahant) are inherited from RHL 7.x via Debian Woody and Sarge.
I quite expected problems switching between RH and Debian, but the _only_ problem I have at present that logging out doesn't save my desktop for restoration when I login again.
On Sun, 2007-01-07 at 07:14 +0900, John Summerfield wrote:
I quite expected problems switching between RH and Debian, but the _only_ problem I have at present that logging out doesn't save my desktop for restoration when I login again.
You have had better luck than I - have seen applications that crash due to bad user config files, menu entries in the GUI or desktop icons that point to nowhere and do nothing, missing entries for installed applications that are present in a fresh install, bogus environment variables that put non-existent items on the $PATH or point applications to missing/changed directories, ....
Anyway, I'd count not saving the desktop settings as fully satisfying my guarantee of problems. :-)
Phil
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John Summerfield -
Johnny Hughes -
Peter Serwe -
Phil Schaffner -
R Lists06 -
Will McDonald