Excellent detail! And you mentioned a few things that I never would
have thought of on my own. Thank you for taking the time to type it up.
I do have a few questions though:
DJA wrote:
Ralph Shumaker wrote:
Ever since I've upgraded my friend's pc (from rh9 to fc3), the pc has
been experiencing wierd problems. I would like to chuck it all,
except for the stuff I should keep.
I figure I should keep /home, but what else?
Now, just for the sake of argument, let's say that I'm keeping only
"/home" and "/stuff". Should I first wipe the drive, do the fresh
install, and *then* dump /home and /stuff back in? Or should I dump
them back in *before* doing the fresh install.
Here are a few helpful things (in no particular order) I've learned
over the years about upgrading/reinstalling Redhat and Fedora Core on
home systems.
1) Re-installing works out better than upgrading. I format all
partitions except /home and occasionally /usr/local. I also
backup /etc (home file servers with gobs of disk space are
wonderful!).
Yeah, I used the new HDD that I bought for my system (but not yet
installed) and did "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdg". Then, after verifying
as best I could, I wiped hda, installed, and copied /home back on top of
it. The old installation was chopped up into various partitions. But I
dispensed with that (for the most part) and threw everything into one
partition (except for swap obviously). The way I had chopped it up
before left too much space in the wrong places. (I will reply (below)
to your comment about LVM.)
2) There is little point in preserving existing apps. At least the more
pedestrian ones. By the time you upgrade to a newer version of the
OS, most if not all of those apps are likely more out of date the the
OS itself. Plus often enough, you'll find the latest versions some
apps don't play well with older incarnations of the kernel or some
library or six. Fedora Core (FC) comes with a decent enough selection
of apps that you don't really need to keep cruft around. Which brings
up the next point.
"the more pedestrian ones"? What does that mean?
3) Each successive version of FC has included fewer and fewer apps in
the standard distribution, so as to fit the entire distro on only
four CD's (I'm guessing so as to keep the burning and mailing costs
down for repackagers).
Yeah, I wish they would include these on CDs, maybe called "Optional
Extras".
4) *DO NOT* create any user accounts from within the FC installer unless
you don't mind UID/GID pairs based on some goof ball Redhat lunacy
(IMHO). This is especially true if you are preserving /home and any
apps owned by non-system, non-root users.
Any user you create from within the installer (and also with
System-config-user) will create a UID of n and a GID of n+1, starting
with UID=501. So the UID/GID list will start 501/502, 503/504,
505/506, etc. Maybe there is some esoteric or security reason for
this, but I like my UID/GID pairs to match e.g. 506/506.
If you create users from within the installer (i.e. using the GUI),
you are given no control over either UID/GID or home directory
locations or names. It's a PITA to fix this after the installation,
especially if the user has already logged in, and even worse if that
user has run X. In fact, you have to be careful in creating users
in System-config-users also, because its defaults make the same mess.
Use the CLI tool to create the users and groups, and then the GUI
tool to maintain them if you like. If you use the GUI tool to create
new users, make sure you create their group first or you might not
get what you want, and the GUI tool won't let you remove or rename a
group unless you first remove its users. Also the GUI tool doesn't
handle passwords as flexibly.
I created them from the graphical interface (not during the install,
except for maybe the user that was 501 on the old installation). Before
creating *any* of the users on the new install, I noted from the old
install all the user and group info from the users and groups gui. I
had no trouble creating the same sets on the new install. I did not
create groups. It automatically created the groups (correctly) when I
created the users. But, maybe this process was helped by my having
copied /home before doing this. Actually, I do not recall when I copied
/home, whether before or after. I knew each user's password, so I don't
remember if I entered this information when setting up the users or if
it didn't even ask me.
5) Password and Shadow files seem to migrate just fine. Keep a copy of
the more complex configuration files, including but not limited
to, fstab, smb.conf, hosts, or any other fancy shit you hand-tweaked.
These are handy for reference if nothing else.
Not knowing what to keep, I temporarily used my new HDD (which was
supposed to be replacing my other HDD but delayed by this) and kept it
all. But all I copied back in (so far) is /home .
6) A re-install is a perfect time to do some repartitioning. I prefer
to switch to the console and run Fdisk for that rather than
Disk Druid, although I prefer Disk Druid for establishing mount
points. I also prefer Disk Druid for setting up Logical Volumes -
which I recommend BTW. I put everything into an LV except /, and
/boot (drat that italicizing notation!).
How does one invoke Disk Druid outside of the install process?
Are you saying that you even put swap into an LV?
I've never done anything with LVs. Are they easy for the non-initiated?
And what is the reasoning behind partitioning, anyway? Either I never
understood this, or I have just plain forgotten.
7) *BACK UP EACH USER'S MOZILLA AND/OR FIREFOX DIRECTORIES AND FILES*.
While FC still includes Mozilla, Firefox and Thunderbird are now the
default browser and email apps, respectively. And they don't
completely migrate existing folders and files from your existing
older Mozilla or Netscape configuration.
I took care of this by selecting Mozilla in the install list. It was
not selected by default, but it was there (fc3).
You very likely will find some or all of the mail folders missing
for each user in Thunderbird (TB). The data is still intact, but has
to be manually copied from the old .<email_client_folder> to TB. Make
sure you look at /all/ your existing folders (e.g. Sent, Saved,
In Box, etc.) before you use that account in TB or you'll play hell
trying to merge stuff back in later. I recommend you compress all
existing mail folders before the migration.
Firefox doesn't seem to import Tab Sets reliably from Mozilla.
So you'll have to recreate those again from scratch. I didn't have
any problems with bookmarks.
Is there any advantage to using TB and FF over mozilla?
8) Do a 'yum -y update' immediately after the initial install. This will
actually take significantly longer with FC1-FC3 than the install. FC4
is not so bad as there haven't been as many updates, and the default
app list is much smaller.
Don't forget to change the Yum default repository lists to faster
sites. Also, Fedora (Yum?) has changed where it looks for the list
repositories:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] miscellaneous]$ ls -la /etc/yum.repos.d/
total 56
-rw-r--r-- ... 233 Nov 1 2004 fedora-devel.repo
-rw-r--r-- ... 931 May 24 22:21 fedora.repo
-rw-r--r-- ... 280 Nov 1 2004 fedora-updates.repo
-rw-r--r-- ... 282 Nov 1 2004 fedora-updates-testing.repo
These are now pointed to by /etc/yum.conf.
How do I change them to "faster sites"? How do I know what is "faster"?
9) Redhat (Fedora) no longer includes any software which is encumbered
(i.e. is not OSF compatible), including most multimedia stuff, so
you'll have to get that from its maintainers. Freshrpms used to
include a lot of those apps, but the list has shortened
considerably.
10) I've found that with disk space being so cheap now that it's less
hassle for me to just do a full install (i.e. Install Everything)
rather than cherry pick which stuff I want and don't want.
I did do a "Server Configuration" on my file server, but that was
the exception. Installing everything seems to lessen my having to
chase around for the odd missing library or other dependency when
adding some new app on a desktop box.
Of course doing a full install means you /will/ have to turn off more
unneeded services afterwards (why does Redhat think that just because
I installed Canna, I need it running?). Naturally, laptops are an
obvious exception to my own rule (unless, of course like me, your
laptop came with 100 GB hard drive. :-D
11) If you are moving from RH9 and older, then I see little reason to go
with anything less than Fedora Core 4 (FC4). If you are overly
cautious, FC3 will do, but FC4 seems more than stable enough for me,
and I expect FC5 won't be far off now. FC4 also seems to handle
things like USB storage and wireless better.
FC4 did not work on my PC for some reason. IIRC, the install went
smoothly but first boot would freeze. What I do remember vividly is
that the freeze was consistent. The same place, the same info, the same
everything, every time.
12) If you cant' find your CD/DVD drive, look in /etc/media. This is
where FC now mounts removable media. Autodetecting of these devices
(USB Flash drives, etc.) works nicely in FC4. There's not even any
need to create a mount directory anymore as it's now done on the fly
once the drive is detected, and it's removed once the drive is
unmounted.
Redhat-config-<service_name> has been changed to
system-config-<service_name>.
There are a few other changes of directory names and file
relocations. Redhat seems to like to do that with nearly every new
version. But then I /like/ adventure.
13) If you've got an AMD64, don't forget to get the 64-bit ISO's rather
than the x86 ISO's. I have heard that some games don't play nice in
the 64-bit FC4 - NeverWinter Nights being one example - so I've
stuck with the x86 version for now.
14) SCSI support seems to get worse and worse on my Tyan K7 Thunder
mobo with each new kernel. I've filed a couple of Bugzilla reports
with Fedora but have yet to receive any solutions. But I think that
is a kernel issue rather than a distro problem. Or at least I like
to think so. It's probably not relevant here as regards Fedora Core,
but it's been a nagging problem since kernel 2.6.12.
Others may have tips or workarounds which contradict what I've
mentioned here. And I may have forgotten something which will either
hand you a shovel or a ladder. I'm by no means an admin type, and no
doubt there are all kinds of clever little tricks to squashing each of
the items above. This is just info based on what works, or not, for me
such that I now have a mostly workable and less painful job when it
comes time to update my Fedora boxen.
So, if none of this helps - tough!
Thanks again for going into such detail.
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