Re: [CentOS] Upgrading FC2 to CentOS 5.* - anyone second this? - general report
On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 02:56:24 PM Max Pyziur wrote: My hope is to upgrade; that way I don't have to change/specify partition topology, and hopefully only minimally adjust the existing configurations. I have tried this type of upgrade before; I have not had it go well for the most part. The only way I'd try to do an FC2 to C5 upgrade is by incrementally upgrading up to FC4 or FC5 using install media, then boot the C5.8 install media with 'upgradeany'. It may break things very badly. Just to advise the general readership. I downloaded iso's for FC3, FC4, FC5 DVD install discs, and their accompanying rescue CDs. The machine under consideration is old by contemporary standards (a PIII-1400 w/ 1.5GB RAM, and three discs, one 2TB in size generally used to store backups. The FC2-FC3-FC4-FC5 upgrades were done in about three hours; the time was split between checking the integrity of the DVDs and CDs and the upgrade. Today, I did the FC5-CentOS5.8 upgrade. In each phase, the machine booted and functioned. I recognized the postgresql issue you mention further in your posting; I've been through something like that several times, so I know how to work through it. All-in-all, this has been easy; nothing like the FC14-FC15 DVD upgrade on my desktop that froze that I did two weeks ago (there, I spent a very large amount of time unraveling dependency issues and package duplications). I hope to do other FC upgrades in the spirit of being current, but I anticipate that it won't be as easy as the FC2 - CentOS5.8 has been so far. I recognize that most of the comments were from sysadmins, more involved in managing server farms, and steeped in that knowledge/experience base. Much thanks to thoughtful comments and cautions, fyi, Max Pyziur p...@brama.com I have had to do this sort of upgrade on SPARC systems running Aurora SPARC Linux; did a yum-based upgrade up through a few revs, and it was a pain. I only did it because install media wasn't already available, and you had to go backrev to get booting media on my particular box (although the installed system worked fine once installed). It is really something I would rather not do without the preupgrade logic in place, primarily because of non-repo or third-party repo packages that may or may not be around any more on a newer repo; for that matter, the Fedora package set in the FC2 days is likely to be larger than the C5 package set unless you enable third party repos at install/upgrade time, and that isn't guaranteed to work. This sort of discussion is in the archives several times, and I think I have put my particular recipe out there before. It is recommended by the upstream vendor, Red Hat, to not do any major version upgrades from one version of EL to another. EL4 was based from around FC3, and you are essentially talking about a direct upgrade from a pre-EL4 to EL5; these two are more different than you might think. (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux#Relationship_to_free_and_community_distributions for info) Beyond that, the upgradeany path is probably the least tested of all the anaconda install paths, and will likely traceback at the worst possible time. Upgrades aren't easy (even on Debian/Ubuntu where packages being upgraded can ask questions and do significant things, unlike in the RPM scriptlet case). Preupgrade has failed for me more than it has worked, going through several revs of Fedora. Having said all of that, if you analyze your particular package set and you figure out that all of the packages have identical configs between FC2 (or EL4, for that matter) and EL5, and that you're not using a package that has had major changes and upgrades break data (like PostgreSQL; FC2 shipped a significantly older PostgreSQL than CentOS 5 does, and a major version upgrade on PostgreSQL requires some special handling), you might be able to get it to work. But it will probably take more time to successfully upgrade than it will to do a fresh install with the same list of packages and a restore of compatible configurations onto that fresh install. But, it's your time to waste if you want to do so. If you want to see this sort of thing on the MS OS, there is a YouTube video out there highlighting upgrading through all versions of Windows; the cruft leftover from Window 1.0, 2.0, and 3.x in a Windows 7 upgraded system is a thing to behold. ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Upgrading FC2 to CentOS 5.* - anyone second this? - general report
On Jun 3, 2012, at 12:55 PM, Max Pyziur p...@brama.com wrote:
On Wednesday, May 30, 2012 02:56:24 PM Max Pyziur wrote:
My hope is to upgrade; that way I don't have to change/specify partition
topology, and hopefully only minimally adjust the existing
configurations.
I have tried this type of upgrade before; I have not had it go well for
the most part. The only way I'd try to do an FC2 to C5 upgrade is by
incrementally upgrading up to FC4 or FC5 using install media, then boot
the C5.8 install media with 'upgradeany'. It may break things very badly.
Just to advise the general readership. I downloaded iso's for FC3, FC4,
FC5 DVD install discs, and their accompanying rescue CDs.
The machine under consideration is old by contemporary standards (a
PIII-1400 w/ 1.5GB RAM, and three discs, one 2TB in size generally used to
store backups.
The FC2-FC3-FC4-FC5 upgrades were done in about three hours; the time
was split between checking the integrity of the DVDs and CDs and the
upgrade. Today, I did the FC5-CentOS5.8 upgrade.
In each phase, the machine booted and functioned.
I recognized the postgresql issue you mention further in your posting;
I've been through something like that several times, so I know how to work
through it.
All-in-all, this has been easy; nothing like the FC14-FC15 DVD upgrade on
my desktop that froze that I did two weeks ago (there, I spent a very
large amount of time unraveling dependency issues and package
duplications). I hope to do other FC upgrades in the spirit of being
current, but I anticipate that it won't be as easy as the FC2 - CentOS5.8
has been so far.
I recognize that most of the comments were from sysadmins, more involved
in managing server farms, and steeped in that knowledge/experience base.
Much thanks to thoughtful comments and cautions,
You might want to crawl /etc, /bin, /sbin, /usr and /var for files not under
management and see if you have anything left over.
I might use find here,
# find /etc -type f -exec rpm -qf \{\} \; -print
Of course the rpm command should be tweaked so it it just returns an error code
if the file isn't in the database instead of any output and have find -print
the path so you can redirect the output to a file.
Remember not all files not under management are orphan files, so you will need
to use some knowledge to figure out which you can rm.
-Ross
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Re: [CentOS] Upgrading FC2 to CentOS 5.* - anyone second this? - general report
On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Max Pyziur p...@brama.com wrote: I recognize that most of the comments were from sysadmins, more involved in managing server farms, and steeped in that knowledge/experience base. And in upgrades, and thus have experience with the difference in effort and results And you still have yet to explain what you think the result of the extra hours of downloading and work has gained compared to a clean install and copying your data back. As far as I can see, it is a bunch of orphaned files, a wildly fragmented disk layout, and probably a less efficient filesystem. This is especially true since you mentioned having several disks, one probably large enough to hold a complete backup of the old system disk so you could easily pick out what you want back in the new install. -- Les Mikesell lesmikes...@gmail.com ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Upgrading FC2 to CentOS 5.* - anyone second this? - general report
On Sun, 3 Jun 2012, Les Mikesell wrote: On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 11:55 AM, Max Pyziur p...@brama.com wrote: I recognize that most of the comments were from sysadmins, more involved in managing server farms, and steeped in that knowledge/experience base. And in upgrades, and thus have experience with the difference in effort and results My point was that it is a different focus, knowledge, and experience base. If server farm system administration is what you know, then you will place all issues in that framework. If all you know how to use is a jackhammer, then you'll approach every problem in the same way. My personal goal was to preserve the topology of the disk layout, as well as the configurations. And you still have yet to explain what you think the result of the extra hours of downloading and work has gained compared to a clean What extra hours? The downloading was done overnight, the diskburning was relatively quick. install and copying your data back. As far as I can see, it is a bunch of orphaned files, a wildly fragmented disk layout, and probably This is now an example of a casebook fallacy - a strawman argument. W/o investigating anything, you've projected a set of unsubstantiated qualifications on a situation and are now arguing against them. a less efficient filesystem. This is especially true since you mentioned having several disks, one probably large enough to hold a complete backup of the old system disk so you could easily pick out what you want back in the new install. The 2TB disk is where backups for several resident machines resides (notebooks, desktops); it's about 84% full. Admittedly, there's space for configurations, but that was not my first interest (I think that I've stated that at least twice). MP p...@brama.com ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Upgrading FC2 to CentOS 5.* - anyone second this? - general report
On Sun, 3 Jun 2012, Ross Walker wrote:
On Jun 3, 2012, at 12:55 PM, Max Pyziur p...@brama.com wrote:
[... deleted for the sake of brevity ...]
Much thanks to thoughtful comments and cautions,
You might want to crawl /etc, /bin, /sbin, /usr and /var for files not under
management and see if you have anything left over.
I might use find here,
# find /etc -type f -exec rpm -qf \{\} \; -print
Of course the rpm command should be tweaked so it it just returns an error
code if the file isn't in the database instead of any output and have find
-print the path so you can redirect the output to a file.
Remember not all files not under management are orphan files, so you will
need to use some knowledge to figure out which you can rm.
Great advice, and I'll take it up shortly.
Much thanks.
MP
p...@brama.com
-Ross
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Re: [CentOS] Upgrading FC2 to CentOS 5.* - anyone second this? - general report
On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Max Pyziur p...@brama.com wrote: My personal goal was to preserve the topology of the disk layout, as well as the configurations. Which are trivial to reproduce. And potentially improve in the process. And you still have yet to explain what you think the result of the extra hours of downloading and work has gained compared to a clean What extra hours? The downloading was done overnight, the diskburning was relatively quick. You did mention several intermediate versions that would not have been needed. You can't possibly claim it did not take extra time. install and copying your data back. As far as I can see, it is a bunch of orphaned files, a wildly fragmented disk layout, and probably This is now an example of a casebook fallacy - a strawman argument. W/o investigating anything, you've projected a set of unsubstantiated qualifications on a situation and are now arguing against them. No, I'm asking what you think you gained, and you still can't describe how your result is an improvement over a fresh install. The 2TB disk is where backups for several resident machines resides (notebooks, desktops); it's about 84% full. Admittedly, there's space for configurations, but that was not my first interest (I think that I've stated that at least twice). Yes, you did say that, but why? Did you just want to prove it can be done the hard way, or do you think your machine is somehow better now? -- Les Mikesell lesmikes...@gmail.com ___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Re: [CentOS] Upgrading FC2 to CentOS 5.* - anyone second this? - general report
On Sun, 3 Jun 2012, Les Mikesell wrote: On Sun, Jun 3, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Max Pyziur p...@brama.com wrote: My personal goal was to preserve the topology of the disk layout, as well as the configurations. Which are trivial to reproduce. And potentially improve in the process. It may be trivial for you, but not for me. And you still have yet to explain what you think the result of the extra hours of downloading and work has gained compared to a clean What extra hours? The downloading was done overnight, the diskburning was relatively quick. You did mention several intermediate versions that would not have been needed. You can't possibly claim it did not take extra time. I measured the amount of time that it took against a recent FC14-FC15 upgrade via DVD. That took the bulk of a weekend. This series of sequential upgrades took a few hours. install and copying your data back. As far as I can see, it is a bunch of orphaned files, a wildly fragmented disk layout, and probably This is now an example of a casebook fallacy - a strawman argument. W/o investigating anything, you've projected a set of unsubstantiated qualifications on a situation and are now arguing against them. No, I'm asking what you think you gained, and you still can't describe how your result is an improvement over a fresh install. Ok, I sense that there is some sort of affront and that you need to defend yourself. I'm not challenging you, your experience, your capabilities, and your knowledge. They are commendable. Nevertheless, what several individuals, including yourself, have presented is that a fresh install is the optimal solution; anything else has elevated risk. In my case, I've preserved my disk topology and my configurations, which was one of my priorities; I've expended a few hours, and I'm doing other things. The 2TB disk is where backups for several resident machines resides (notebooks, desktops); it's about 84% full. Admittedly, there's space for configurations, but that was not my first interest (I think that I've stated that at least twice). Yes, you did say that, but why? Did you just want to prove it can be done the hard way, or do you think your machine is somehow better now? Never said this is the hard way; but it definitely is not that challenging, especially since I don't have the experience or knowledge of yeoman sysadmins. And I'm not seeking to win a trophy for my machine; I'm seeking basic and simple continuity. fyi, MP p...@brama.com___ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
