upgraded FC3 to FC4 and then FC4 to FC5

[H.S.]

Hello,

I just did two upgradation mostly successfully and figured I should list 
my experiences here.

Note: I did the upgrading using Yum via internet. You need a fairly 
decent internet connection since you would need to transfer anything 
around 1.2GB of data.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Upgrading FC3 to FC4 using Yum
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I first read the steps from the Fedora Wiki: 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq
and then started the procedure:

Made sure I was using the most recent kernel by using the commands
#> yum check-update
#> yum update

Then as a good precaution, did:
#> rpm --rebuilddb

Next, I installed the upgrade package (after downloading it from a mirror):
#> rpm -Uvh fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm


This next step was crucial: my /var is on a separate partition and is of 
1 GB size. I was pretty sure I would need to download more data than 
this. So I moved /var/cache to /home (since yum uses /var/cache to 
temporarily store the downloaded packages) and made a link to 
/home/cache from /var using the commands:
#> mv /var/cache /home/
#> cd /var
#> ln -s /home/cache

Now /var/cache -> /home/cache and /home had plenty of space

Then I did the update:
#> yum update

This gave a message about some dependency problems with:
bcel, ffmpeg, kino, junit and cercer-j packages. Removed those packages 
and their dependencies and kept a note of these package since I would 
then install them later in FC4.

Then did yum update again (which transfered around 1.6 GB of files) and 
got a message about a conflicting file in 'Industrial' them with 
gnome-theme-extras. Removed the latter package and again did yum update.

Then yum ended with messages that some packages need some diskspace -- 
basically my dist space in /usr was not sufficient! I had not forseen 
this. I had around 3 GB empty. Apparently this was not enougth disk 
space. So I remove some could of groups of packages and kept a note of 
those so that I could remember to reinstall them in FC4:
#> yum remove openoffice.org\*
#> yum remove kde\*
Dependencies Resolved
Dependencies Resolved
Transaction Listing:
   Remove: kde-i18n-French.noarch 1:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdeaddons.i386 0:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdeadmin.i386 7:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdeartwork.i386 0:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdebase.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.3
   Remove: kdebase-devel.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.3
   Remove: kdegames.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdegraphics.i386 7:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdegraphics-devel.i386 7:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdelibs.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.2
   Remove: kdelibs-devel.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.2
   Remove: kdemultimedia.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdenetwork.i386 7:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdenetwork-devel.i386 7:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdepim.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdepim-devel.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdesdk.i386 0:3.4.2-0.fc3.2
   Remove: kdesdk-devel.i386 0:3.4.2-0.fc3.2
   Remove: kdeutils.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdeutils-devel.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.1
   Remove: kdewebdev.i386 6:3.4.2-0.fc3.1

Performing the following to resolve dependencies:
   Remove: k3b.i386 0:0.11.14-2
   Remove: kdbg.i386 1:2.0.0-0.fc3.1
Total download size: 0
Is this ok [y/N]:

With these packages removed, the subsequent "yum update" command wanted 
to only download around 860 MB of data (of course, this was already 
downloaded in cache and was not really going to be transfered anew). In 
any case, this solved the /usr size limilation problem.

I did the upgrade and all mostly went fine. Only that my up2date was 
still trying to search channel of FC3 even after putting $releasever in
/etc/sysconfig/sources file. Had to put version "4" explicitly to make 
it see the right channel. In any case, I see that up2date does not work 
anymore and yum should be used instead.


So that is it, I just had to put in the new kernel config files in 
/boot/grub/grub.conf manually to reboot into the new FC4 kernel.

Then I just needed to reinstall the packages I needed to from the ones I 
had previously uninstalled. However I was planning to upgrade the new 
FC4 to FC5 and so put off the reinstallation of the packages for later.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Upgrading FC4 to FC5 using Yum
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This went rather smoothly.
Made sure I was using the most recent kernel by using the commands
#> yum check-update
#> yum update

Again, as a good precaution, did:
#> rpm --rebuilddb

Next, I installed the upgrade package (after downloading it from a mirror):
#> rpm -Uvh fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm


At this point, I had plenty of space in /var/cache (around 3 GB). Then I 
updated the system:
#> yum update

Then I did:
# /sbin/fixfiles relabel

and put in the new kernel config lines in /boot/grub/grub.conf and 
rebooted into the new kernel and spanking new FC5.

                      ----X----


Looking back, I see that I
Upgraded FC2->FC3 using FC3 CDs
Upgraded FC3->FC4 using yum and internet connection
Upgraded FC4->FC5 using yum and internet connection.

In hindsight, I guess I prefer the yum upgrade method (of course you 
need a decent internet connection for this to work reasonably fast). 
Since if something was to be fixed, I could just CTRL+ALT+F2 (or F3 or 
F4 etc.) to get to another prompt and do the necessary operations 
(remove a particular package, free disk space, etc.) without rebooting.

I usually use Debian and see that yum is coming along nicely in terms of 
a nice package manager. I only wish it could list the speed of the 
download while it was downloading packages. This gives me some idea if I 
should try a different mirror. Just givine the ETA is not the same 
thing. Also, I wish there was a "--test" or "--pseudo" option in yum to 
just try the operations. But I am glad the yum is now much faster than 
it was in FC2 or FC3. Wonder what made the difference? (I am being lazy, 
guess I could read the changelogs).

Anyway, even though this is not ah exhaustive guide, I hope this will 
help others in these tasks in conjunctions with other webpages, 
specially the Yum upgrade Wiki.

->HS