Thanks for the info.

Well the main reason for me to migrate to centOS is that I don't have a subscription to RHN for this box. So not able to do anything to keep this system up2date :-)

It is running for over a year now and I would like to install updates.

My intention is to upgrade the kernel to the latest release from CentoS 3 update 6 I believe. In fact update the whole system to update6. And eventually to centOS 4 to get a 2.6 kernel runnning..

Is the kernel config then adapted from the current running kernel ? wil all modules be in /lib/modules/2.4.<CentOS release> ? A collegue of mine informed me that as of RHEL update 4 380 G2's will run fine ,hardeware driver wise, withhout the HP Serivce Pack.

Is it yum update or yum upgrade b.t.w that I should run ?

thanks,

Peter

Johnny Hughes wrote:

On Wed, 2005-11-23 at 10:05 +0100, Peter van Eck wrote:

...

Hi,

I've got a HP 380 G2 which is running RHEL AS 3 Taroon update 1.

The current smp kernel 2.4.21-9smp is booting with a HPinitrd image. Mostlikely generated with the HP proliant Service Pack for RHEL 3.

Now if I migrate this system to CentOS 3 and a new kernel will be installed ,will that work ? Does the new centOS kernel use the same config as the current RHEL kernel ?

Anyone done this before ?

I don't have access to the console so can't take too much risk here..

thanks,

Peter

When CentOS-3.1 came out, we did our kernels differently (we had a c0 in the name then). Also, the kernel we used was a bug fixed kernel kernel-2.4.21-9.0.1.EL.c0.i686.rpm . If you don't want to upgrade your kernel, you can add:

exclude=kernel*

in your /etc/yum.conf file later on (if you choose to use CentOS)

Are you doing any upgrades to that system (you should be if it is touching the internet :) If you are using up2date to update your system, using CentOS is easy. If you are not, it is going to be harder. (BTW, if you are not updating the system at all, you can just run what you currently have).

If you are not upgrading it at RH, but you want to have CentOS (and stay at the update 1 level) you can get what we initially released for by 3.1 buy going here:

http://vault.centos.org/3.1-final/os/i386/

In the RedHat/RPMS directory there 3 files you would need yum-2.0.5-1.centos.2.noarch.rpm , centos-release-3.1-1.i386.rpm , and centos-yumcache-3.1-0.20040318.3.noarch.rpm

You would need to download those and install them via RPM.

You would need to then edit the file /etc/yum.conf

add the line:

exclude=kernel*

And then remark out everything except [base] and [addons] (including updates if you don't want updated from the EL3 update 1 level).

Also change the paths to:

[base] baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/3.1-final/os/$basearch/

[addons] baseurl=http://vault.centos.org/3.1-final/addons/$basearch/

With kernel excluded and those items set, you should get the files updated that CentOS has had to change for artwork reasons, etc. ... but still be at the 3.1 (ie EL3 update 1) level of packages.

If you have been doing updates from up2date, you need to do some things differently, so let us know.

---

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

Thanks. Ignore most of my previous reply.

Yes I didn't install this machine initially so have no clue how the HPinitrd was built. Luckily I found some leftovers from that ~/root including a rhel3 HP280 install doc. I won't attempt to upgrade the kernel or install a new one without having access to the console. The machine is physically 1500 km away :-)

So not touching the kernel but upgrade the rest of the system will cause no harm ?

A detailed description in the smartfaq on how to migrate RHEL3 to CentOS 3 is using "yum update" instead of "yum upgrade"

However the man page says that "upgrade" is deprecated and may be removed in the future ..

thanks, Peter

Karanbir Singh wrote:

Peter van Eck wrote:

...

The current smp kernel 2.4.21-9smp is booting with a HPinitrd image. Mostlikely generated with the HP proliant Service Pack for RHEL 3.

Now if I migrate this system to CentOS 3 and a new kernel will be installed ,will that work ? Does the new centOS kernel use the same config as the current RHEL kernel ?

No it wont work, you will need to rebuild the initrd and the required kernel moduls first.

...

I don't have access to the console so can't take too much risk here..

One way to work around the situation would be to first exclude the kernel and upgrade everything else to the latest CentOS Release. Then install the new kernel with a "yum install {kenel-version-release.arch}" ( dont upgrade the kernel, just install the new one - multiple kernels can co-exist with no issues ). Once you have installed the new kernel, check your boot loader configs to see what is the 'default' kernel. You might want to leave default kernel on the old one - till you can get the new initrd in place.

It would, however, make sense to try find out how the original initrd was built and what, if any, new modules need to be created first.