[Centos] RHEL3 ES to CentOS-3.1 - Possible??

Sun Aug 8 19:59:28 UTC 2004
Ryan Sweet <rsweet at aoes.com>

On Sun, 8 Aug 2004, Doug Mayer wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Does anyone know if it is possible to move from RHEL ES 3 to CentOS-3.1?  
> I've seen How-To's for RH9 --> CentOS-3, but nothing for the more horizontal 
> move of EL3 --> CentOS3.
> 
> Thanks in advance,

Definitely possible.  I've done it a few times.  Make a good backup first.  

The main thing is that you need to install all of the centos yum packares
and centos-release.  The rest depends upon how up to date your RHEL3 is.  
If you have not applied any updates yet, then yum -y update will do most
of the work, however, if you have applied RH updates, or there are
packages that you have installed which have a "-centos" tag on the centos
version of the RPM but are otherwise the same version, then the packages
with corresponding "-centos" versions (httpd, for instance) won't be
upgraded (err, did that make sense?)....

If you want to play it safe and be sure all of your packages are updated,
you can install the centos yum and release packages, then grab a list of 
all of the packages that have a "-centos" release tag, and use yum to 
install those by hand before using yum to update the rest of it.

What you DON'T want to do is to use rpm and force the centos packages 
alongside the RHEL ones.  If yum/rpm complains about the "-centos" version 
conflicting with the _same_version_ of the package, then backup your
config, remove the RHEL package, and install the "-centos" version.  

regards,
-Ryan

-- 
Ryan Sweet             <ryan.sweet at aoes.com> 
Advanced Operations and Engineering Services
AOES Group BV            http://www.aoes.com
Phone +31(0)71 5795521  Fax +31(0)71572 1277