On 06/06/2017 03:45 PM, John R Pierce wrote:

On 6/6/2017 12:38 PM, Jerry Geis wrote:

...

I have older systems out there that work fine, just for what ever reason would be great to upgrade from a C5 -> C7 (due to no longer supported) or C6 > C7 (for updated packages).

Sounds like the upgrade tool is not quite an option... I was thinking...

What would be wrong with any "easy" script that did the following:

1. Removed all packages with the --justdb option.
2. Import the RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
3. install the centos-release-7.3.1611 ... rpm
4. yum -y upgrade
5. yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop" (for example)

and reboot of course.

Does that have any chance or working and be valid?

the correct method is

1. backup all user files, databases, and settings.

2. clean install c7, configure required packages.

3. restore user files, databases, and settings.

or easier

1. install c7 on new server

2. move over all services, functionality, etc. one by one.

This is how I do it. I just don't trust updates. Plus there is all sorts of detritus that builds up that you really don't want to drag along....

On 6/6/2017 5:29 PM, m.roth@5-cent.us wrote:

Jerry Geis wrote:

...

I have older systems out there that work fine, just for what ever reason would be great to upgrade from a C5 -> C7 (due to no longer supported) or C6 > C7 (for updated packages).

Sounds like the upgrade tool is not quite an option... I was thinking...

What would be wrong with any "easy" script that did the following:

1. Removed all packages with the --justdb option.
2. Import the RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7
3. install the centos-release-7.3.1611 ... rpm
4. yum -y upgrade
5. yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop" (for example)

and reboot of course.

Does that have any chance or working and be valid?

I know I've posted what we do here to upgrade one system from another before, but not in a few years.

mkdir /new mkdir /boot/new rsync -HPavzx --exclude=/old --exclude=/var/log/wtmp --exclude=/var/log/lastlog $machine:/. /new/. rsync -HPavzx $machine:/boot/. /boot/new/. rsync -HPavzx /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* /new/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts rsync -HPavzx /etc/sysconfig/hwconf /new/etc/sysconfig rsync -HPavzx /boot/grub/device.map /boot/new/grub/ rsync -HPavzx /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules /new/etc/udev/rules.d/ find /new/var/log/ -type f -exec cp /dev/null {} ;

Fix /new/etc/fstab, ESP if you use UUID. I *strongly* prefer LABEL= Then, any webserver stuff if the old was running it. If this system is using Linux RAID,

rsync -HPavx /old/etc/md.conf /etc/

If yuo want to, copy the original SSH keys:

rsync -HPavzx /etc/ssh/ssh_host* /new/etc/ssh

Don't forget /boot/grub/device.map, and for C6, /new/boot/grub/grub.conf is right, or for C7, /new/boot/grub2/grub.conf is good.

NOTE this will work for identical machines. Otherwise, BEFORE you rotate ou may need to run "mkinitrd" for the latest kernel if the hardware is different between the machine you are upgrading and the machine you made the copy.

mount --bind /dev /new/dev mount --bind /sys /new/sys mount --bind /proc /new/proc mount --bind /boot/new /new/boot chroot /new cd /lib/modules VER=$(ls -rt1 | tail -1) echo $VER mkinitrd X $VER mv X /boot/initrd-$VER.img exit umount /new/dev /new/sys /new/proc /new/boot

Then rotate:

zsh zmodload zsh/files

cd /boot mkdir old mv * old mv old/lost+found . mv old/new/* .

# Root partition. cd / mkdir old mv * old mv old/lost+found . #mv old/root . -- WHY? mv old/scratch . mv old/new/* .

sync sync

And reboot. If there are issues with grub, get it up from the grub shell, then grub-install or grub2-install as appropriate.

Interesting process. As far as I can tell, this keeps very little of the configuration from the old system. You would still have to re-install and copy the configurations for any necessary packages along with any crontab entries that were on the old system.

Other than reducing downtime, what are the advantages of doing this rather than just building the new OS onto a new hard drive and then copying things over?