Upgrading to FC3 - [was Re: [ILUG] DHCP on home LAN?]

[Paul Jakma]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Kenn Humborg wrote:

> I'm not 100% sure about this, but I'd say that the transaction 
> handling in the RPM database should be able to survive a crash in 
> the middle of an upgrade.

I've had this happen to me, and yes it can survive. however..

>  Either a package is installed, not installed or partially 
> installed.  If the post-install scripts are sane, it should always 
> be safe to completely re-install an already-installed or 
> partially-installed package.  So restarting the upgrade should be 
> OK.

The problem is though you'll be left with a half-upgrade, some 
packages will have been upgraded, some will still be the old. If 
you're lucky, it needs no more than apt-get dist-upgrade, if you're 
unlucky it can take major futzing.

I dont see how an anaconda based upgrade could avoid this problem 
either..

> If the smart guys in Red Hat didn't think about this a long time ago,
> I'll be very disappointed with them.

The debian people and Connectiva people have been thinking just as 
long about apt ;).

That said, I guess RedHat have more scope for adding package specific 
hacks to anaconda.

> Don't go around recommending yum/apt as a way to upgrade to FC3. 
> FC3's installer does some magic to switch from a static /dev to a 
> udev-based one.  There are manual steps to do this if you're not 
> using anaconda (described in the release notes), but I don't think 
> mortals want to try that.

Yuk, so they didnt make it part of the RPM? Sigh..

> I haven't done an anaconda-based upgrade for a long time, but I'm 
> going to do one for FC3.

I test apt-get dist-upgrades on a throwaway test box first to see how 
it works out. Will let you know how FC2->FC3 goes when I get around 
to it.

> Later,
> Kenn

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma paul at clubi.ie paul at jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune: 
Backward conditioning:
 	Putting saliva in a dog's mouth in an attempt to make a bell ring.