[CentOS] Upgrading FC2 to CentOS 5.* - anyone second this?

Wed May 30 15:04:01 UTC 2012
Max Pyziur <pyz at brama.com>

> On 05/25/2012 07:52 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 7:42 PM, Max Pyziur <pyz at brama.com> wrote:
>>>>> I *do* still have an FC2 box.
>>>>>
>>>>> Would anyone second this procedure:
>>>>> http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14052&forum=37&post_id=47945
>>>>>
>>>> It might possibly work, but I can't quite imagine why anyone would
>>>> want to do it at this point.  Why not back up anything you might want
>>>> to keep, install a nice clean Centos 6.x and put back the files you
>>>> wanted?
>>> It's a test machine that replicates a production server. The production
>>> machine was setup in May 2011 when CentOS was in 5.8 and no 6.x had
>>> shown
>>> up.
>>>
>>> So, I need a text 5.x box.
>> Even so, what's the point of an in-place upgrade compared to a fresh
>> 5.x install?    Even if it works, there will be old cruft left around
>> that you don't need and that may cause surprises later.
>
> What Les said ...
>
> If the production box is already CentOS 5.x ... it would seem to me that
> you already know what needs to be done to make your items run on
> CentOS-5.8.
>
> If you upgrade a Fedora box to CentOS, while it can be done, it will
> contain many packages that are not part of CentOS.  It will not be
> stable and it will not be a duplicate of your production box.

The point is to leave configurations, partitions, and other components as
close as possible to being intact. Since this is a server environment,
there are about 700-800 packages, not the 3000 that sit on desktop
machine. Make lists of rpms on the FC2 install, and then sdiff'ing with
the list of rpms installed from the CentOS upgrade should be one way of
identifying non-CentOS packages and/or duplications.

Last, CentOS is built from Fedora Core 6. Usually, it makes sense to
proceed sequentially. But how much difference is there from FC2 to
FC6/CentOS 5.*?

MP
pyz at brama.com


> Backup the old info and wipe the machine, put 5.x on it, bring in the
> items you need from the backup (most of which you should know how to do,
> since you are already using it on 5.8 in production).
>
> It is not worth the hassle of trying to remove all the Fedora Core items
> later on and doing an in-place upgrade ... at least not in my opinion.
>
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