RE: upgrading ~6.1 to 7.3

[Cameron Davidson csiro au]

I think you'll go crazy trying to resolve the dependencies if you do it one
by one.

The following is just my viewpoint, others no doubt will have different
ones...

I recently upgraded an X-workstation from 6.2+ to 7.3 and it wasn't too bad.
But certainly not without a bit of work. I then upgraded a server/firewall
from 6.2
to 7.3 and was left with an unbootable system, due to some changes I had
done
rearranging directories on filesystems. The CD even failed to work in rescue
mode
- I could boot it but couldn't do anything useful. That occurred after
several hours
swearing at it because it kept telling me that there was not enough space on
the root FS.
Even after I moved ... I'll spare the details, but the space calculations
seem about
as reliable as MSoft's.

I had made copies of root and usr filesystems on separate partitions and was
able to
reboot to those, restore the non-upgraded filesystems and fix the original
problems.

The moral of the story... If you have spare disc space/extra discs then use
them to
backup system files. Try upgrading, to a copy, and be ready to give up
quickly if
it starts behaving unexpectedly. A clean install, followed by migration of
your
config settings might be faster in the long run.

Before embarking on the upgrade,
1. check all symlinks in the system areas and make sure they are
relative, not absolute (i.e. they shouldn't start with '/') (That one killed
my
upgrade to 6.1 from 4.2) - "find / -type l -ls", or run separate finds from
 /etc, /lib etc.
2. find all *.rpmsave, *.rpmorig etc files from older upgrades and get them
out of the way.
You'll need to later wade through the new ones to check what has happened.

Cameron.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Piotr Krukowiecki [mailto:piotr pingu ii uj edu pl] 
> Sent: Monday, 30 September 2002 20:02
> To: redhat-install-list redhat com
> Subject: upgrading ~6.1 to 7.3
> 
>
> 
> I need to upgrade RG 6.1 (or maybe 6.2? some packages from 
> this, some from
> that) to 7.3
> 
> I don't have confidence in auto upgrade, so i'd prefer to 
> upgrade packages by hand, one by one. Any advices for me? 
> Which packages upgrade first, 
> what should i look out etc.
>