I just upgraded to FC4 from FC3 and I had some troubles that should not have happened. My FC3 system was current with updates, and I used downloaded ISO's from fedora. The problem was that many of the FC3 packages were more up to date than the FC4 packages, so the upgrade did not install them. This included the kernel. I felt lucky that I had a workable system. Running up2date did not help -- I was still in an FC3 system (kind of). I manually installed the FC4 kernel and ran up2date again, but it was stuck on many packages, because up2date only wanted to freshen existing rpm's -- it didn't want to add any new ones to solve dependencies. After much arm-wrestling (floundering?), I gave up on the GUI up2date and ran with the command line, feeding it chunks of rpms that needed updating. I feel lucky that I didn't brick my system. What did I do wrong? This must be a common occurance. I have another system that I need to upgrade, but I don't want it to go like this. What's a better way? Thanks, Bill
On Sun, Jan 22, 2006 at 10:13:27PM -0500, Bill Mills-Curran wrote:
I just upgraded to FC4 from FC3 and I had some troubles that should not have happened. My FC3 system was current with updates, and I used downloaded ISO's from fedora. The problem was that many of the FC3 packages were more up to date than the FC4 packages, so the upgrade did not install them. This included the kernel. I felt lucky that I had a workable system.
This this is a known problem. glibc in FC3 was updated to one newer than any available glibc for FC4, causing most of the system to not upgrade.
Running up2date did not help -- I was still in an FC3 system (kind of).
Try using 'yum update' instead. up2date is not really being maintained as the way forward, and it isn't beat on as heavily as yum. Also, try first removing all old kernels, leaving just the newest (2.6.12-1.1381_FC3), and manually downgrade glibc to the latest FC4 one.
I feel lucky that I didn't brick my system. What did I do wrong? This must be a common occurance. I have another system that I need to upgrade, but I don't want it to go like this. What's a better way?
Yeah, the maintainer of the glibc package doesn't think this is important enough to fix right away: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=172823 It seems that the Fedora developers now recommend re-installs as opposed to upgrades, which is a shame since Fedora Core and Red Hat Linux before it were always known for their stellar upgradeability. Hopefully with the formation of the Fedora Foundation, more and more of Fedora Core itself will be community-maintained, where people who care about such things as upgradeability can make sure that goal is maintained.
Bill Mills-Curran wrote:
I feel lucky that I didn't brick my system. What did I do wrong? This must be a common occurance. I have another system that I need to upgrade, but I don't want it to go like this. What's a better way?
You didn't do anything wrong, you just took an unexpected upgrade path. In the future though, you may find these guys helpful: http://fedora.isphuset.no/ They rebuild the install ISO images periodically *with* the latest updates. Their main point is to reduce update-time after you install, but I think you discovered an even more compelling reason for them to do what they're doing. Note: those are unofficial images. That said, I've used them and they worked fine for me. --Matt
Bill Mills-Curran wrote:
Running up2date did not help -- I was still in an FC3 system (kind of).
I manually installed the FC4 kernel and ran up2date again, but it was stuck on many packages, because up2date only wanted to freshen existing rpm's -- it didn't want to add any new ones to solve dependencies.
That's why you're almost always better off using 'yum' instead of 'up2date'. Yum is smart enough to track down and install dependencies for you. I would abandon using up2date unless you're using RedHat Enterprise Linux (which you're obviously not). You'd still have the same problem with yum that you had with up2date regarding the "system thinks it's FC3 instead of FC4" issue (hint: manually update an rpm by the name of "fedora-release") --Matt
On Sun, 2006-01-22 at 22:13 -0500, Bill Mills-Curran wrote:
I feel lucky that I didn't brick my system. What did I do wrong? This must be a common occurance. I have another system that I need to upgrade, but I don't want it to go like this. What's a better way?
Hey there Bill. Sorry to hear about your upgrade woes. On my fedora boxen, I avoid up2date. (although I have had great experience with it on the RHEL distro with Red Hat Network) I'm a big fan of yum. I think Seth Vidal has done a great job with it and I have used it to upgrade several systems. I have taken one box (standard LAMP stuff) from FC1 => FC4 with no problems. After a backup of /var and /home, my general procedure is to: a) 'yum update' my box to ensure latest/greatest from the Fedora Base and Fedora Updates repositories. b) manually install fedora-release RPM. c) manually install yum rpm for the release (in your case FC4) that you are upgrade to. d) double check that I have GPG check enabled in my yum config files and I also have the correct keys on my ring. e) do a sanity check that I have good network connectivity to the remote repository that I am going to pull my RPMs from (personally, I've settled on mirrors.kernel.org). f) yum upgrade g) review the list of packages it marks for upgrade and the associated dependency checking for sanity. h) cross fingers. hit 'Y'. go get coffee. Best of luck, --Larry
participants (4)
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Bill Mills-Curran -
Chuck Anderson -
Larry Underhill -
Matthew Gillen