Hi All, I'm getting things ready to upgrade my aging installation of MySQL 5.0.95 on my CentOS 5 LAMP server. With the impending EOL date of 3.31 fast approaching my sense of doom and urgency is increasing. I see that the necessary packages are available in @base and @updates - mysql51 and mysql55 respectively but from all the information I've read on the matter so far I'm left with a few questions I don't yet have answers to.' What I've done so far and thankfully was able recover from: 1. installed and enabled to epel repo - ran yum remove mysql - this command wanted to remove a few things I wanted to keep in place like dovecot and a few php53 packages. I didn't want to have to go back and clean up any messes that would create. So, I used the rpm -e --nodeps command to remove the MySQL packages. - because this was a redhat repo it installed the binaries in a total different place AND tossed all my existing data directories. and yes I spit coffee all over my laptop screen and yes, I did have data dir backups and a dump of MySQL data. HOLY CRAP! 2. removed the epel packages - disabled this repo - for ever at least for now... 3. reinstalled the old MySQL 5.0.95 packages - because I was hyper-ventilating - reset roots password - imported all the databases from the dump and checked my web apps - everything working again. - I did have to recreate the mysql.servers table to be able to flush privileges. I understand that mysql51 is available in @base for the sole purpose of upgrading old MySQL and mysql55 is in updates for getting to 5.5, however here is where things get a little fuzzy for me: Steps for Upgrading (as I understand them): 1. Take a dump of all mysql database using mysqldump --add-drop-database --all-databases 2. Stop mysql services 3. make a backup of data directories: /var/lib/mysql (but its not _supposed_ to remove the data directories.) 3. yum remove mysql mysql-server (again, it will include a few things I don't want removed. so, i'll have to use rpm -e --nodeps and list the packages for removal then issue yum clean all.' 4. yum install mysql51 5. start mysql service 6. run command mysql_upgrade... (here's where things start getting fuzzy) Question #1: is this command to be run from the commandline or should I log into mysql as root user and run the command? Question #2: at this point I will have mysql 5.1 installed and running but to get up to 5.5 am I expected to yum remove 5.1 and then yum install 5.5 from @updates and repeat steps 5 and 6 OR simply run the command yum update mysql51* to catch all already installed mysql51 packages to and then run the mysql_update command to bring data up to date with the current mysql install? THank you for your kind attention... -- Mark