[CentOS] Upgrade from 5.6 => 5.7

Thu Sep 15 13:37:58 UTC 2011
Steve Walsh <steve at nerdvana.net.au>

Always Learning wrote:
> What did you expect ?  Its not Windoze ;-)
>   
Hrm. In an effort to pull this thread back onto topic, instead of a "my 
IBM DB2 database is better than your mysql junk anyday" thread, let's 
look back at various known issues over each release cycle;

5.1 - 
http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.1#head-da845ab1cd8fc52963ad03fdbdefc2bde261b0a6
    * Kernel had known issues regarding autofs and nfs
    * Typo in /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession
    * nautilus-sendto has a require for libgaim.so.0., which no longer 
existed in the CentOS-5 tree

5.2 - 
http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.2#head-447967c60eb305ef2c5dbbc3f4e8b3c4c5170632
       *The nss_ldap package is broken with bash 3.2 (command 
substitution), causing substitution errors and prevents su - 
<any_ldap_user> from working.
       * upgrading bind-chroot where the bind update overwrites any of 
the user's custom settings like ROOTDIR=/some/other/path with the 
default ROOTDIR
       * performance issue with 3ware controllers
       * known issue with the kernel that prevents it from booting.

5.3 - 
http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.3#head-198f803bc13b52348780db429ae42e0daf82282b
       * Known issue with rpm and glibc updates that required a specific 
upgrade path.
       * you need to uninstall openmpi and lam before you can update
       * ntfs code was broken, resulting in centosplus kernel not being 
able to be shiped with ntfs enabled.
       * 5.3 would crash immediately after install on certain 
virtualisation platforms.

5.4 - 
http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.4#head-29511ff6659f6463d444feb92326ed2232fc8c08
       * known issues with the glibc version and incompatibility under 
vmware.
       * the typo in /etc/X11/xinit/Xsession from 5.1 resurfaces
       * intel video cards would blank screen following the update, 
requiring editing of the xorg.conf and a restart.
       * More known updates to glibc, yum, rpm and python requiring a 
specific update sequence.

5.5 - 
http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.5#head-2dd2d2fe0b1675dbb12ed3b487df995ddbe2b9eb
       * issues with Virtualbox compatibilty during the upgrade
       * nvidia drivers are not compatible with updated system
       * More intel video card breakage
       * LDAP was lobotomised, requiring configuration changes to operate
       * Performance issues with nvidia controllers resulting in 
sluggish and limited performance.
       * yep, you guessed it, More known updates to glibc, yum, rpm and 
python requiring a specific update sequence.

5.6 - 
http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.6#head-60758eb5ab66c94f98fda0383fa8c7a8b97b9c53
       * httpd would not start after an update due to ssl and mod_nss issues
       * scsi-target-utils broke iscsi mounts for large disks, requiring 
a downgrade to 5.5 packages to function properly
       * changes to the configuration files for file-backed KVM machines
       * the version of nspr-devel shipped with 5.6 was older than that 
in 5.5 updates
       * potential issues with subversion package
       * kernel errors on some platforms where the system had more than 
3Gb ram.
       * Yay! More known updates to glibc, yum, rpm and python requiring 
a specific update sequence

So, what can wrong? Quite a bit.

Yes, the 'known issues' section on the 5.7 release notes is pretty 
barren, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any bugs at all in the 
product, waiting to bite someone who blindly charged into their update 
crying "Sod off with the backups, we're not using Microsoft products 
here" and run 'yum -y update'.

Steve