WARNING:DO NOT UPGRADE TO CORE 4

[Paul Howarth]

On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 13:32 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Guy Fraser wrote:
> 
> >> Also consider the possibility that it might make more sense
> >> to keep /home on a separate partition, and leave this alone even if
> >> installing.
> 
> > That can and does cause problems as well.
> > 
> > Using old configuration files can and does cause lots of
> > problems when the software that uses them is updated, that
> > includes to user level config files in the home directories.
> > 
> > Unless the update process has a way of updating all the configuration
> > files under /home it is better to tar it up and store it
> > somewhere. You can restore it in an alternate location and
> > move the files that don't exist after the upgrade then use diff
> > to determine what needs to changed in with the files that are left.
> > 
> > That is basically what I do when I upgrade a server.
> 
> You must have lots of spare time on your hands.

There is no "quick" way to update a server (or any other machine that's
actually being used). Somehow you're going to have to move your
configuration files forward to the new release.

If you go the "upgrade" route then rpm will identify lots of files that
may need changes making (by creating .rpmsave/.rpmnew files) but you
still may need to do some manual package maintenance (e.g. removing
packages no longer part of the distribution [e.g. some of the emacs
packages in FC4], adding in optional new packages [e.g. evince in FC4]).
Per-user configuration files like ~/.gnome* won't get changed if you do
an upgrade, so for instance if you do an FC2->FC3 upgrade, you'll still
have one panel in gnome rather than the FC3 default of two.

If you go the "install" route then you'll have to identify for yourself
the configuration files you'll need to move forward, and save and
restore those files. You won't have any accumulated package cruft
though, which will save some post-install time removing and adding
packages. If you retain /home as an unaltered partition then you'll
still have the issues with per-user configuration files as with the
upgrade route.

So there's no easy way and what's best for one person isn't necessarily
best for anyone else.

Paul.
-- 
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>