[CALUG] Fedora upgrade unsuccessful

[Joe]

Wow people here are clairvoyant...  :)

I just happened to get my hands on a used laptop last week.  Since this one 
does not have a dedicated user/use, I decided to take the same steps I took 
with upgrading my PDC (without Amahi) - I got exactly the same problem I saw 
with the original effort.  For the 2nd time I modified the disk layout and 
increased the size of /boot from 200MB to 800MB - wow it worked!!!  It's 
still going at this time but so far it's been very smooth on this test 
machine.

That being said, since /boot needs to be increased in size, the only way to 
do it is to do a fresh install.  I wish I could use F15 but F14 is what 
Amahi supports right now.

Thanks for sticking with my trials and tribulations...

- Joe

-----Original Message----- 
From: Bryan J Smith
Sent: Friday, June 17, 2011 12:27 PM
To: James Ewing Cottrell 3rd ; calug at unknownlamer.org
Subject: Re: [CALUG] Fedora upgrade unsuccessful

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
------------------------------------------------------ 
LS3 Z51:  When you absolutely, positively need to pass
that "Smart Car" by accelerating 60-100mph in 3rd gear
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.

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