New to Fedora

[Robert Locke]

Hey Joe,

Let me give you a slightly different take on this.....

On Mon, 2004-11-15 at 21:31, Joe Giles wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> I used to run Red Hat 6,7,8,9, but have not ran Fedora as of yet. I 
> currently use Gentoo for my workstation and have been wanting to try out 
> Fedora. I have heard good things about it and appreciate the community 
> and support.
> 
> I have a couple of questions I would like to ask if you could spare a 
> moment of your time...
> 
> 1. Once Fedora is installed, and a new version comes out (Say "Fedora 
> 4"), will updating my system using up2date or yum install the current 
> packages for the new version on my system; thereby updating the system 
> with the same new software as the new release ("Fedora 4")? I like to 
> keep my systems around for a while and don't like to reload the OS very 
> often.
> 

There are two methods for "upgrading" to a new "release" versus
"updating" individual packages that happen at random times.

The first method is to use the "installer" called anaconda to perform an
"upgrade" of your system.  This requires downloading some boot media and
then going through a normal installation process but choosing
"upgrade".  You can either download all the ISOs and burn the CDs, or
you can download a small boot.iso medium and do a "network install". 
The use of anaconda is the preferred method for "upgrading releases". 
Some people prefer to be more protective, and will actually backup their
/home directory and perform a virgin install of the new version and then
restore their /home directory.  This was more successful as we
transitioned from FC1 to FC2 because of the number of changes between
the releases (2.4 kernel to 2.6, XFree86 to X.org, LVM1 to 2, etc).

The second method is to use yum or apt to perform the "upgrade" with
slightly different syntax to the commands.  General steps involve
pointing the utilities to the new version repositories and then running
the yum or apt commands telling them not just to "update" but rather
"upgrade".  There are some messages in the archives that detail some of
these steps though I personally have not used them and cannot attest to
their success or failure.  My conjecture is that these would be
successful if there were fewer radical changes that might require
changes to a "down" system versus a "running" system.  For example if
you were running LVM1 from FC1 and wanted to upgrade to FC2 and LVM2,
how would we update the lvm data files while your system is "using"
them?

Moral of the story is going to be use anaconda if possible, be prepared
for some problems if you do not use anaconda for the upgrade though you
may get some rare stories of success of upgrading with yum and apt.

> 2. Does the RPM package manager still suffer issues with dependencies as 
> it used to? Example... Trying to install "Package 1" reveals Dependant 
> packages needing to be installed, reveling yet more packages that need 
> to be installed to satisfy the last Dependant package; wash, rinse, and 
> repeat. Will up2date and/or yum take care of these dependencys for you now?
> 

rpm dependency hell is generally solved when using up2date/yum/apt.  Of
course, this comes with one big caveat.  The tools are configured to
point to one or more repositories.  Dependencies can only be resolved if
the needed package is available in one of the repositories that you have
configured yourself to point to.  For example there have been numerous
messages of people pointing themselves to use the rpm.livna.org
repositories but failing to point themselves to the fedora.us (Fedora
Extras) repositories which are required by rpm.livna.org.  Of course,
the rpm.livna.org home page states it rather emphatically though
apparently reading is optional for many users.... <big grin>  Of course,
this use of repositories is much like the use of private channels in RHN
on RHEL.  We can now define our own repositories with our own rpm files
and use it to manage a group of systems.....

> I appreciate your time in answering these questions for me.
> 
> Thanks!!!
> 
> Joe
> 

Hopefully, this will mean welcome back to the fold.... :-)

Enjoy,

--Rob