Upgrade from FC6 to FC9 questions

[LM_Windchaser]

I would like to upgrade my machine which runs as a server from FC6 to FC9. I realize that this is a major jump and it would be best to do a fresh install. What I would like to know is what is the best way to preserve my configuration and settings information? Also, will I need to repartition my disk or will the install detect my current partitions and use them? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I am quite knowledgeable about computers (software engineer by trade) but don't spend too much time managing Linux or Fedora boxes. as such, some of my Linux knowledge is a bit rusty.

Thanks for the help.

[jayd512]

Hello and Welcome!

Before anything else, I would advise making back-ups of any important data you may have. Then try your hand at an upgrade (the installer will have that option). So long as you have separate / and /home partitions, you should be able to just glide through the process.

[LM_Windchaser]

Hello and Welcome!

Before anything else, I would advise making back-ups of any important data you may have. Then try your hand at an upgrade (the installer will have that option). So long as you have separate / and /home partitions, you should be able to just glide through the process.

I tried to run the upgrade off the DVD but it failed. I think this may be due to the fact that I have nVidia graphic drivers. As for backing things up what is the best method to back up my system? I have the following partitions on my system:

/boot
/var
/home
/mail
/tmp
/

My disks are running RAID 1.

[jayd512]

I've not personally used it, but Clonezilla has been getting pretty good praise.

I tried to run the upgrade off the DVD but it failed.

What do you mean? Failed in what way?

[LM_Windchaser]

I've not personally used it, but Clonezilla has been getting pretty good praise.

What do you mean? Failed in what way?

I started the process and within a few screens it popped up a diaglog box saying the install failed. Looking at the details it appeared to be some type of graphic error related to buttons. I would have to run it again to get the specific error. I figured this was related to the nVidia video drivers I have installed.

[jayd512]

I can't remember, does the Fedora 9 DVD include a text-based installer?

[LM_Windchaser]

I can't remember, does the Fedora 9 DVD include a text-based installer?

Yes there was a text option. I can give that a try.

[jayd512]

Post back with how you do on the text-based. If you get it installed, then installing nVidia drivers afterwards is no big deal.

[LM_Windchaser]

Well, I finally resolved all of my issues. I believe the initial failures were due to the DVD I was using was for the i386 distribution and my system is a x64 distribution. Once I ran the original disk in text mode this became quite clear. The graphical update didn't really give me any indication of the mismatch. So I downloaded the appropriate distribution, attempted to burn it to a DVD from the current Linux box. For some reason the DVD burn failed. I then downloaded the distribution to an identical machine running Windows XP and burned the image to DVD there. This burn was successful and I was on my way.

The upgrade at this point ran smoothly. Applying all of the updates and bug fixes to the packages was a bit time consuming. There were tons to update in in some cases the dependencies weren't figured out correctly. I went through the process of manually selecting chunks of updates and eventually got everything updated.

The only remaining question I have is that I noticed that I have some packages for the i386 architecture installed. In most cases I have an identical package for the x64 architecture as well. Can I safely remove all of the i386 packages at this point? Do I still need to keep them on the system. I did find that I had to remove some of them in order to apply all of the updates since they conflicted with the update for the corresponding x64 package. If they are not needed I would like to clean up my system and get rid of them.

I would like to comment that as I was going through literally 100's of updates I found that yumex was much better than Fedora's the built-in Update tool. Though the Fedora tool was nicer looking yumex was much better at giving me information (at least making it easier to find and read) about the conflicts and missing dependencies that it made it easier to select large portions of the available updates and apply them. Also when working with large numbers of updates its list of updates was displayed in a much more condensed view which made browsing them easier.

Thanks for the help.

[jayd512]

Can I safely remove all of the i386 packages at this point?

I don't see why not. Just keep notes on what you remove (just in case)