Online distro upgrade

[Aurelien Bompard]

Hi all

This is probably a stupid question, but anyway...
If I understood correctly, an upgrade from one distro to the next (say, FC1
to FC2) will never be as good with apt or yum as it is with anaconda.
Anaconda knows much more about the process, which packages need to be
removed, which packages need to be installed, and what needs to be done to
the system (ie all the SELinux labelling stuff)

But online upgrade is really extremely useful, especially for a distro with
a 6 months release cycle (I've recently heard Debian users boast --again--
about that)
Well, if anaconda can handle the process when it is run from the CDRom,
would it be possible to make it do its job from a running system ? I
suppose it is not possible right now, but would it be possible to just
download the isos, mount them on a loopback device, and launch anaconda
from there ? If needed, it could require a reboot at the end of the
process, etc...
Are there operations which need to be done on an unmounted filesystem ? If
yes, they could be done by a "very-first-start" program after anaconda's
work, or even something loaded in RAM.

I have no idea whether this is possible or not, because I don't know
anaconda's design. If this is the most stupid proposition you've ever
heard, please ignore this. If it is technically impossible, please tell me.
If there are better solutions to upgrade an online system, please tell me
too. But if it is possible (for FC4 or even FC3), this would really rock.
Thanks for your attention.


Aurélien
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unintentional side effect." -- Linus Torvalds