[mythtv-users] Fedora 8 bug looking for help

[R. G. Newbury]

David George wrote:
> On 12/06/2007 11:11 PM, Mitch Gore wrote:
>> On Dec 6, 2007 9:44 PM, Christopher X. Candreva <chris at westnet.com 
>> <mailto:chris at westnet.com>> wrote:
>>
>>     On Thu, 6 Dec 2007, Mitch Gore wrote:
>>
>>     > It has since been resolved but with the resolution I don't see
>>     how i can
>>     > install F8 on my machine that only has sata drives.  I currently
>>     have FC6
>>     > installed on my backend and wanted to upgrade to F8 as FC6 is EOL.
>>
>>     Since you are doing an upgrade, you can upgrade via yum on the running
>>     system:
>>
>>     http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq
>>
>>     I've done this a few times, including 7->8 but not specificly 6->8.
>>
>>     This will upgrade directly to the current versions from updates so
>>     you can
>>     skip the buggy package.
>>
>>
>> Im just afraid that its going to cause problems then i am going to be 
>> stuck rebuilding everything with F7 clean install.  If thats the case 
>> i would rather just leave the server alone and wait for F9.  If i do 
>> F7 im going to be in the same situation in 6 months.
>>
>> Does Fedora ever update the ISO's for a version or do they just leave 
>> it alone?  Seems kind of dumb that they would just leave it alone when 
>> some people cant even install the OS if they moved from Windows.
> Fedora Unity ( http://fedoraunity.org ) releases respins.  I haven't 
> used their F8 respins, but I have used earlier ones.
> 
> I have also gone the yum upgrade method.  Not specifically the one 
> above, but I looked at the link and it is similar to the one I used.  
> No-one recommends skipping a version, but you can try it if you are 
> brave.  Just make sure you have backups, including a mysql dump so you 
> can restore the database.  If you do end up going to F7 (you can upgrade 
> by installing the F7 CD and selecting upgrade), you should be able to 
> use the yum upgrade method to go to 8.
> 

I would strongly suggest that you use the 'nuke it and start fresh' 
route. I presently have 4 running machines (down from 5) and all of them 
have been upgraded/re-installed from time to time. EVERY time I tried to 
do a major step upgrade, I had problems. It takes only a little more 
time to do a complete install.

There are actually few files which you *need* to keep, mostly 'your own' 
stuff, likely in /usr/local/sbin and /usr/local/bin, plus your /home 
folders. I just copy those to somewhere along with all of /etc although 
you need only about a half dozen files from there, mainly to avoid 
having to re-enter things (hosts, modprobe.conf, any changes to bashrc, 
ld.so.conf, the extra init.d scripts we know and need (mythbackend, 
lirc) etc. etc.

It's also a good opportunity to re-arrange the hardware, buy another 
(bigger!) hard drive for video storage, move the OS to its own drive, etc.

The kernel has become much more forgiving, especially as many things 
which were a complete pain in 2005 are now built into the kernel (Anyone 
remember the "fun" we had with duplicate instances of tveeprom.ko).

But any driver which is kernel specific is a candidate for problems on 
an upgrade. Very often an install will have a kernel specific module 
available.

At the least, you need to approach an upgrade as if you *were* going to 
do a 'nuke it' install. That way you *will* have the backups.

Of course, YMMV

Geoff