[CentOS] Upgrading from CentOS 5.6 to 6.0

[Craig White]

On Sun, 2011-07-24 at 22:20 -0400, Thomas Dukes wrote:
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: centos-bounces at centos.org 
> > [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Lanny Marcus
> > Sent: Sunday, July 24, 2011 8:51 PM
> > To: CentOS mailing list
> > Subject: Re: [CentOS] Upgrading from CentOS 5.6 to 6.0
> > 
> > On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Thomas Dukes 
> > <tdukes at sc.rr.com> wrote:
> > > Just ran the installation DVD but there is no option to 'upgrade'. 
> > > Looked at the RHEL docs, 
> > > 
> > http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html/Inst
> > > allati
> > > on_Guide/ch-guimode-x86.html#id4594292 referenced off the CentOS 
> > > Release notes but the CentOS installation doesn't offer the 
> > 'upgrade'.
> > >
> > > I use to be able to upgrade by doing a 'yum update'. That 
> > doesn't work 
> > > either.
> > >
> > > 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!!
> > 
> > @Thomas: I'm a "newbie" home user, with CentOS on our 
> > Desktops, and Red Hat Linux, before that.
> > 
> > I do not believe you understand the philosophy behind CentOS 
> > (an Enterprise OS) or RHEL (the upstream distro). This is a 
> > distro with a
> > *LONG* life, and without the "latest and greatest", for 
> > security and stability reasons.
> > 
> > It has always been recommended to do a "Clean Install" when 
> > moving from one major version (ie: 5.x) to a newer version 
> > (ie: 6.x) and then to Restore your data, from your backup.
> > 
> > If you do it in some other fashion, there are apt to be 
> > problems, which will probably not be supported on this list.  
> > If you break it, you will fix it.
> > 
> > There is a lot of information available, on CentOS.org in the Wiki.
> > HowTos, FAQs, etc. If you look there, you will find many 
> > things explained clearly.
> > 
> > Also, if you search the archives of the mailing list, you 
> > will find a ton of information, from a large group of highly 
> > knowledgeable users.
> > People who work with CentOS in the Enterprise, all day, every day.
> > 
> > Installing non RPM software on an RPM Distro like CentOS is 
> > frowned upon. That is the worst way to do it. There are 3rd 
> > party Yum repositories, with lots of things that have been 
> > packaged for CentOS and you can install them with Yum, once 
> > you have the Repository data ready for yum.  You probably 
> > won't need to rebuild many packages, if any, if you use the 
> > 3rd party repositories. GL 
> 
> I have never had a problem upgrading a CentOS release since I started with
> 3.x. Seems now, I can't even upgrade from 5.6 to 5.7. I have never had to do
> a complete re-install since moving from Slackware 1.x to Redhat 2.x except
> once when I had a hard drive failure.
> 
> I'll be moving to Ubunto. They have a 3 year window for support on a
> distribution unlike CentOS/RHEL. They seem to be more user friendly for a
> home networking environment.
> 
> The software package I use which takes hours of trial and error to compile
> and install is as simple apt-get install under Ubunto. There are no rpms for
> zoneminder 1.24.x. The compliation of ffmpeg/zoneminder seems to be an issue
> with CentOS with the outdated php/mysql and other various libs.
> 
> I can see the direction RHEL is taking and its more and more like Microsoft.
> The enduser is having to be more and more dependent on the provider. CentOS
> has its hands tied.
> 
> I thank all for the help I have recievied over the years, its just not
> beneficial to stay this current direction.
----
update from CentOS 5.6 to 5.7 (when 5.7 becomes available) is
automatic... just run 'yum update' - no extra efforts or thought need to
be given.

update from CentOS 5.x to CentOS 6.x is at best a crapshoot. Skilled
admins should be able to fix whatever needs fixing. Less than skilled
admins will find it takes less time to backup and re-install.

As for switching to Ubuntu...

I have switched my latest installs from RHEL/CentOS to Ubuntu. Primarily
because I felt I couldn't rely upon timely releases/updates.

Let me assure you though that nothing is perfect with any distribution
and while some packages might be newer/more readily available on one
distribution than the other, there are certainly other packages that are
newer/better vice versa.

ffmpeg on CentOS/RHEL 5.x is a bit behind (CentOS/RHEL 5 is way behind).
zoneminder is just perl scripts so it doesn't make that much of a
difference if it is RPM packaged or just tarball install

CentOS/RHEL has a much larger window of support for a specific version
than Ubuntu so claiming that Ubuntu has a 3 year window as an advantage
suggests that you don't understand the RHEL/CentOS support windows at
all.

Craig


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