I have searched the list, and don't see this covered or didn't search for the right words.
I'm running CentOS 4.8 and have some DVD's for 5.4. I have a lot of customized and additional software installed and would like to avoid starting over with a scratch install. After the upgrade from the DVD I would do a yum upgrade to 5.5.
Is this a workable (and safe) thing to do? What should I look out for?
I plan to build a clone of the boot disk in case there is a problem so I can swap it back in to the hba1 position (as soon as I find a way to make a clone of a disk with LVM ).
Here is some info on the system:
[root@hat /]# cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 4.8 (Final) [root@hat /]# uname -a Linux hat.rbt.net 2.6.9-89.0.25.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu May 6 12:28:03 EDT 2010 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux[root@hat .spamassassin]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VG00-LV00 2.0G 695M 1.2G 37% / /dev/hda1 494M 25M 444M 6% /boot none 1013M 0 1013M 0% /dev/shm /dev/mapper/VG00-LV04 9.9G 5.4G 4.0G 58% /home /dev/mapper/VG00-LV05 1008M 34M 924M 4% /opt /dev/mapper/VG00-LV03 4.0G 41M 3.7G 2% /tmp /dev/mapper/VG00-LV01 7.9G 4.2G 3.4G 56% /usr /dev/mapper/VG00-LV02 4.0G 929M 2.9G 25% /var
Thanks in advance for any help with this....
Bob
At Fri, 4 Jun 2010 15:16:05 -0400 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
I have searched the list, and don't see this covered or didn't search for the right words.
I'm running CentOS 4.8 and have some DVD's for 5.4. I have a lot of customized and additional software installed and would like to avoid starting over with a scratch install. After the upgrade from the DVD I would do a yum upgrade to 5.5.
Is this a workable (and safe) thing to do? What should I look out for?
I plan to build a clone of the boot disk in case there is a problem so I can swap it back in to the hba1 position (as soon as I find a way to make a clone of a disk with LVM ).
Here is some info on the system:
[root@hat /]# cat /etc/redhat-release CentOS release 4.8 (Final) [root@hat /]# uname -a Linux hat.rbt.net 2.6.9-89.0.25.ELsmp #1 SMP Thu May 6 12:28:03 EDT 2010 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux[root@hat .spamassassin]# df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/VG00-LV00 2.0G 695M 1.2G 37% / /dev/hda1 494M 25M 444M 6% /boot none 1013M 0 1013M 0% /dev/shm /dev/mapper/VG00-LV04 9.9G 5.4G 4.0G 58% /home /dev/mapper/VG00-LV05 1008M 34M 924M 4% /opt /dev/mapper/VG00-LV03 4.0G 41M 3.7G 2% /tmp /dev/mapper/VG00-LV01 7.9G 4.2G 3.4G 56% /usr /dev/mapper/VG00-LV02 4.0G 929M 2.9G 25% /var
Thanks in advance for any help with this....
What I did was carve out fresh /, /usr, and /var file systems out of my VG (I had enough free space) and did a fresh install, using the *existing* /boot file system. I thus created a dual boot system: 4.8 AND 5.4. I then mounted the 4.8 system file systems read-only on the 5.4 system and 'migrated' the various configuration files. In some cases I could just copy them, in other cases they needed various sorts of updating. Things like dumping the LDAP database and reloading it in the new system. Ditto with the SVN data. Since I had already upgraded both MySQL and PostgreSQL to the newer versions via the CentOS Plus packages, I could actually just copy the databases over (I might have done a dump/restore of the PostgreSQL database). I did things one-by-one, checking to be sure things were sane at each step.
I would recomend *against* trying to do a direct upgrade -- it is too likely to leave some cruft behind, which could cause all many of problems later on.
Bob
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Bob wrote:
At Fri, 4 Jun 2010 15:16:05 -0400 CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org wrote:
<snip>
I'm running CentOS 4.8 and have some DVD's for 5.4. I have a lot of customized and additional software installed and would like to avoid starting over with a scratch install. After the upgrade from the DVD I would do a yum upgrade to 5.5.
Is this a workable (and safe) thing to do? What should I look out for?
What I did was carve out fresh /, /usr, and /var file systems out of my VG (I had enough free space) and did a fresh install, using the *existing* /boot file system. I thus created a dual boot system: 4.8 AND
<snip>
I would recomend *against* trying to do a direct upgrade -- it is too likely to leave some cruft behind, which could cause all many of problems later on.
It is officially (according to RH, AFAIK) NOT recommended to go up a full release by update. Subreleases are fine, but you want a clean install for a new release (that is, 4.x to 5.x).
I recommend what Bob suggested; in fact, I have an article that was published in SysAdmin magazine a few years ago saying just that. (If you want to read the article, it's a link at http://24.5-cent.us, and it was called Upgrading Linux).
mark
On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 04:33:05PM -0400, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
It is officially (according to RH, AFAIK) NOT recommended to go up a full release by update. Subreleases are fine, but you want a clean install for a new release (that is, 4.x to 5.x).
Ah, so that's still the RH way! That's why I left RH behind years ago, in preference for Gentoo and then Ubuntu - both of which are largely very good (although YMMV) at full release updates. Not that I'm finding any lack of features to admire in the current CentOS (and RH) release. Just that it's disappointing to know that, come version 6, if any of the new features are srong reason to upgrade, my collection of CentOS and RH boxen'll have no efficient path to be upgraded to it.
I was kind of hoping RH would have solved this old problem of theirs since I've been away. Guess it's a feature, from their POV, not a bug. It's not that their competitors don't have, occassionally, something small broken in a full version upgrade. It's just that fixing whatever it is is far less labor than what I put into customizing a clean install. I suppose for those who just run a stock distro with one or two customized daemons it's not such a big deal. That can't be the whole RH market though.
Whit
On Fri, 2010-06-04 at 16:49 -0400, Whit Blauvelt wrote:
On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 04:33:05PM -0400, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:
It is officially (according to RH, AFAIK) NOT recommended to go up a full release by update. Subreleases are fine, but you want a clean install for a new release (that is, 4.x to 5.x).
Ah, so that's still the RH way! That's why I left RH behind years ago, in preference for Gentoo and then Ubuntu - both of which are largely very good (although YMMV) at full release updates. Not that I'm finding any lack of features to admire in the current CentOS (and RH) release. Just that it's disappointing to know that, come version 6, if any of the new features are srong reason to upgrade, my collection of CentOS and RH boxen'll have no efficient path to be upgraded to it.
I was kind of hoping RH would have solved this old problem of theirs since I've been away. Guess it's a feature, from their POV, not a bug. It's not that their competitors don't have, occassionally, something small broken in a full version upgrade. It's just that fixing whatever it is is far less labor than what I put into customizing a clean install. I suppose for those who just run a stock distro with one or two customized daemons it's not such a big deal. That can't be the whole RH market though.
---- at least through RHEL/CentOS 5, there has always been the ability to pass 'upgradeany' option at boot but it is an unsupported option for RHEL and you get to keep any pieces that break during the upgrade. The times I have used it, it has generally worked well. I don't know if such an option will be available for RHEL/CentOS 6.
Craig
-
Craig White -
m.roth＠5-cent.us -
Robert Heller -
Robert Tate -
Whit Blauvelt