[CentOS] Upgrading from CentOS 5.6 to 6.0

Sat Jul 23 23:36:08 UTC 2011
R P Herrold <herrold at owlriver.com>

On Sat, 23 Jul 2011, Thomas Dukes wrote:

> I use to be able to upgrade by doing a 'yum update'. That doesn't work
> either.

A low skill user was never able to go from 2.1 to 3, nor 3 to 
4, nor 4 to 5, and an a minimally skilled will not be able 
to go from 5 to 6.  This is the policy of the upstream, and 
a sensible one, because of invasive changes each major 
release represents.  Functionally, each major is a new 
product.

That said, the CentOS wiki has an UNSUPPORTED method for media 
based 'upgradeany' transitions of the type you mention.  It IS 
UNSUPPORTED, because it can break systems.  For that reason, I 
specifically added warnings to that article, to take and test 
backups before trying that path

> Guess I'm stuck with 5.6 as I an not about to install a new version and have
> to rebuild all non-rpm packages from scratch. This is worse than Microsoft!!

Much worse -- you could not steal binaries and license keys 
from CentOS because we give them away for free

CentOS ships no non-RPM packaged packages -- look to whoever 
put those packages on your box without using the packaging 
system if you feel the need to blame someone

-- Russ herrold