[CALUG] Fedora upgrade unsuccessful

[Bryan J Smith]

A number of individuals do fresh installs, and even some new distributions take 
such an approach (e.g., MINT, non-Debian Edition, which is a running Debian Test 
release).

Personally and Professionally, I only do two (2) distro upgrades:  
- Debian Stable (apt-get dist-upgrade)
- Fedora Anaconda (Python set of tools, more than just yum)

Debian's strong packaging guidelines mean upgrades usually work without issue.  
I cannot say the same for most derivatives in my experience.  But I will always 
be a major, even if closet, Debian fanboy.  Sticking with well aligned repos, 
even 3rd party packages don't have issues with upgrades.

Although one can use Fedora's "yum upgrade" (or even "apt-get dist-upgrade" 
using apt-rpm, I did several from RHL6.2 through FC1 that way myself) and Fedora 
does have good packaging guidelines, Fedora has a legacy to fulfilling and does 
not have the strong, minimal guidelines like Debian that I love.  However, with 
that all said, Anaconda is extensive and has been solid for me for over 20 
straight release upgrades.  Only a few quirks here and there, but solid.  Once 
the dynamic modules were added around Yum, it allows me to do updated network 
upgrades.  And Preupgrade since being introduced some 6 releases ago now makes 
it large seemless for most.  This is especially the case with even 3rd party 
repos like RPM Fusion that are well aligned to Fedora, right down to the 
non-free components during upgrades.

Most everything else just breaks for me.  So I'm with you on clean installs for 
those.  I personally and professionally can't stand doing new installs.  I don't 
tinker with my systems much at all.  I'm too busy using apps, like most users.

-- Bryan

P.S.  Although it is not supported (largely for ISV reasons, as the ABI/API 
changes break much certified ISV software), I have used Anaconda to do major 
RHEL upgrades, 3 to 4 and 4 to 5.  Again, I do not recommend it for certified 
installations, but it does work.

 -- 
Bryan J  Smith       Professional, Technical Annoyance 
Linked Profile:     http://www.linkedin.com/in/bjsmith 
------------------------------------------------------ 
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in around 4s so you can shift back to 6th gear and get
the same 30mpg at 75mph he struggles to get at 65mph+.



----- Original Message ----
From: James Ewing Cottrell 3rd <JECottrell3 at Comcast.NET>
Sent: Fri, June 17, 2011 11:25:34 AM

  Well, I hate to jump in here because Bryan seems to be giving you good 
advice, but since I have never used Amahi either I can't resist.

My advice is of the form "when you realize that you're going down the 
wrong road, turn back as soon as possible" and "don't throw good money 
(or effort) after bad".

I never do upgrades...always clean installs. And I would *never* attempt 
to update further than N to N+1.

And I never accept the default partitioning. Disks are Huge these days, 
but someone chose a Puny /boot size.

I usually make an 8G partition, install a small Rescue Linux there that 
owns the MBR, and then use that same partition as the /boot of my "real" 
systems. But *don't reformat* that partition on install.

Since you are using LVM, sharing your existing root LV and create 
another. You can dual boot both systems...F12 and F14. OK, so your files 
in /boot will conflict with each other, but you can put them into 
subdirectories and alter your grub.conf lines.

Or if you want to keep the same root, just same the old files. Do 
something like:

cd /; mkdir /var/hda/f12; rsync -ax / /boot /var/hda/f12

Then do a clean install of f14 (hey...f15 is out now) and redo your 
customizations. How extensive are they?

JIM

P.S. What does your fsck look like? Does it go thru all the 5 passes? 
Since it's probably "dirty" it ought to run, but you may need to use the 
-f option to force it. The -o remount,ro trick that Bryan mentioned 
works nicely, altho you can also run it from Rescue Mode from the CD.