Linux upgrades (was [UUG/MLUG] redhat woes) and a note...

[Ryan Dooley <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Hey All,

First .. the performance tuning document has been slightly delayed (duh
... like we didn't already know that Ryan :-)  ... Finals have gotten in
the way, and it's a low priority right now... I'll try and have things up
over the weekend.

Second...

> Teach me to go and try to upgrade before listening to how many troubles
> everyone else has with it =)
> If it stumps you guys, I have NO business playing with it *heh*

Ok... some quick upgrade notes, based on what I have heard, and my
experiences. (Granted this is for RedHat x86 Linux, and nothing else. ... 
I guess it should be noted that the Debian upgrade from 1.3 to 2.0 was
clean, well as clean as dselect could be :-)

1) If your dual (triple, quad, etc...) boot and use LILO as your boot
manager, you should probably blow it away first (lilo -U (or -u), or fdisk
/mbr from a dos boot floppy), since the redhat install processes doesn't
seem to do a good job of upgrading.  LILO will then be reinstalled and you
can define your multi boots then.

2) Pre-remove any alien packages (in my case it was an X with true type
font support, but the packages had -xtt- in the package name, and redhat
didn't figure out that this was really X and these where packages should
be upgraded).

2a) Or ... if you install compatablility libraries (compat-*), then you
don't need to upgrade/install those packages you want to keep, and could
clean things up a bit later.

3) Create the boot disk when the redhat install process asks you if you
want to.  Seems like it's a good idea, and you once you get the system
installed, if there are any problems booting, atleast you have a boot
mechanism that will allow you to reinstall LILO.  You should also make the
bootdisk if this is the first time upgrading.  There is bound to be
"issues".

Actually there are always issues the first time you upgrade any O/S if you
haven't done it before.  There's conflicts here and there, and most of
them can be avoided once you get the experience of doing it, or the
benefit of the knowledge of somebody else doing it first.

I guess it should be noted that there is a mini-HOWTO already.

http://freesoftware.coe.missouri.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Upgrade.html

We could probabl contribute more to it based on personal experiences
here...  More exposure for the UMC.

                cheers,
                  --ryan

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Ryan Dooley                                    EMAIL:PROTECTED
Systems / Network Administrator                       (573) 884-5154
Center for Tech. Innovations in Education             [573] 884=5158
College of Education               http://www.coe.missouri.edu/~ryan
University of Missouri - Columbia  028237278EAA0A2F EF1C8C62D228334C