Ralph Shumaker wrote:
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.
[snip]
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 By the time you upgrade to a newer version of the
OS, most if not all of those apps are likely more out of date the the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?
Pretty much anything included in the distro. Things like the GNU tools
are going to be replaced by a newer distribution anyway. But I also mean
things like OpenOffice, Mozilla, stuff like that. If you have something
you've spent a lot of time customizing then maybe you only need to
preserve its config files. I suppose something like Apache might qualify.
For instance, the first two apps I install after an upgrade are
Endeavour2, a GUI file manager, and Checkinstall (for making tarball
installs into RPM's). I could back them up in the current installation,
but odds are they're be a newer version available by the time I upgrade
the distro. In any any case, they're not so tedious to install that I'm
really not saving anything (in terms of my labor) by backing them up
(especially if you factor in the possible restore).
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".
Didn't Redhat do that "back in the day"?
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.
But have you looked at what the corresponding GID actually is for a
given user created with the GUI tool? I prefer the UID and GID
(numerical values) to match.
what does
$ ls -lan /home/
show?
[snip]
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?
On Fedora, Disk Druid is the GUI app presented to allow the setting up
of partitions and their mount points - it's part of the default install
process.
Instead of using that to repartition, I switch to a console (the F2
console, I think) and run fdisk. When I've made my partitions, I switch
back the the F7 X console and run Disk Druid (still running) to set
mount points.
Are you saying that you even put swap into an LV?
No.
I've never done anything with LVs. Are they easy for the non-initiated?
Fedora's installer makes it pretty easy to do. I recommend reading the
man pages first though so you understand the terminology. Things must be
done in the right order or you don't get what you think you got, and
you'll find things getting rather messy at boot time. Unfortunately,
Disk Druid will let you make such mistakes without warning.
But Trial and Error are my friends.
They teach me.
And I learn.
Usually.
Unless I die.
And what is the reasoning behind partitioning, anyway? Either I never
understood this, or I have just plain forgotten.
May I assume that when you an installation, you just let the installer
make partitioning decisions for you?
My reasoning? Stuff tends to fill all available space. That includes
hard drives. Every new incarnation of most any Linux distribution seems
to need more and more space on the root partition. I never throw stuff
away so my /home partition is never big enough [1].
And inevitably I make at least one partition way too big at the same
time I make another, more important, partition way too small. Of course,
were I a fortune teller, I could avoid such mistakes, but as I'm not,
LVM is the next best thing.
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?
Personal taste I guess. I think both FF and TB are much more extensible
through the dozens of extensions available for each. Extensions seem to
work better than Plug-ins for Mozilla. And Mozilla Mail is not, as far
as I know, extensible at all.
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"?
Use different repositories. For example, mirrors.kernel.org and livna.org.
[snip]
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.
At what point did it freeze, and what kind of error?
A good place to check is /etc/grub.conf. Make sure it coincides with
entries in /etc/fstab which is where the installer apparently gets its
location for /root when it sets up Grub.
[1] I have three ten-inch high stacks of floppy diskettes sitting in
front of my monitor (Save. Look at These More Closely. Recycle). They've
been there for at least three years. I'd throw them away but I'm not
sure if what is on them is important. And I know it'll take nearly the
rest of my free time in life to go through them to find out. I know
this. I've done it at least a dozen times. All that happens is the
diskettes get shuffled from one pile to another.]
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
--
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