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Michael H.
Asked: 2010-10-17 09:54:18 +0800 CST

question on upgrading Fedora FC5 to something newer

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I have a pair of heavily-used machines which are running Fedora Core 5 or FC6, i.e.:

$ uname -r -v
2.6.20-1.2320.fc5 #1 SMP Tue Jun 12 18:50:49 EDT 2007

(I think one of them might have started out with RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.)

As you might imagine, software doesn't get updated much on them any more because it's a hassle.

Someday I'd like to move these to an updated version of the kernel (and rest of the OS), in order to get bug fixes and general improvements.

At this point, should I just wait until we can buy a new machine, and then move all the users over and reinstall/configure the software? Or can I do an in-place update? I've read posts like this which strongly recommend against trying to upgrade the system. But, does that mean I have to suck it up and backup/transplant/update all the various programs, databases, and all that by hand? If so, it seems like I could move to Ubuntu or anything else because it will be the same basic work anyhow. Is that correct?

linux

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I typically have to agree that upgrade is not usually the best option. Though I have personally used the preupgrade utility in the newer versions of Fedora have had really good luck with it so far. Since F5/F6 is going back at least 7 versions of fedora at this point, I would say the best bet is to start over with a new install.

    If you can wait to do an install on a new system, that will be the easiest because you will still have access to everything on the old system. If there is a requirement pushing you to do the upgrade it would still be possible to install over your existing system AFTER VERIFYING A GOOD BACKUP. If you have all your mount points split out, this can be done pretty easily too. If you have everything under one mount then it is a little more difficult to do that without completely relying on your backup.

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  2. I suggest you wait for the CENTOS 6 release (kernel 2.6.32, the only test version is the RHEL6 beta, no centos 6 beta available). But if you really want updated version of your software you'd better go with debian, since it's a rolling release system. You will always face the same situation with redhat/fedora, updating to another version is always risky. But if you have a solid backup/restore system it shouldn't take too much time.

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