using yum to upgrade from rh8 to fedora core 2

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 12:46:26PM -0800, bruce wrote:
> 
> i have a few rh8 servers that i access remotely. i need to know what's the
> best way to use yum to upgrade the systems to fedora (1 or 2).

I would skip FC1 if only possible.

Your biggest hurdle is to get a system to a state where is enough of
updates for it to be still bootable and a networking in a working
state after a reboot.  The rest can be done, step by step if needed,
from there.  I have no idea if this is really possible but I have,
written in C, applications from times of RH7.x distros still working
happily on FC3 so there is a good chance that this will indeed work.

I would think that after pointing yum to relevant depositories doing

    yum update yum

or maybe

    yum update yum kernel

would get you through the first hump as you will get much more
than it seems due to dependency resolution.  After a reboot

    yum upgrade

should do the rest.  I would definitely try that first on some
"scratch" system to which I have a local access.

Thinking about it Python may give a trouble here because
yum is written it it.  So maybe you need two versions installed
in different paths so yum will not start freak out once you
replaced these?  If you have both you may tell yum what to
use depending on in which stage you are.  Or maybe this will
not happen or can be easily worked around with one or two
'rpm -Fvh ...'?  No idea really but there could be some delicate
points with ordering.  No substitution for trying.

> 
> i'm running
>  httpd
>  mysql
>  gnome
>  vncserver
>  nfs
>  etc...
> 
> and i don't want to screw up the current apps being run on the servers..

Well, you expect to run updated versions of all that stuff.  In case
of C++ written applications that most likely would be a hard
requirement.

   Michal