Upgrading My Fedora slice

The key command to use, when upgraded a yum based distribution, is

rpm -Uhv 
    http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7
        /Fedora/x86_64/os/Fedora/fedora-release-7-3.noarch.rpm 
    http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/7
        /Fedora/x86_64/os/Fedora/fedora-release-notes-7.0.0-1.noarch.rpm

All the above is single command, enter it on one line

I have to give credit for that bit of arcane knowledge to the fine folk at IonCannon With the magic phrases, and the knowledge from a few other google searches, I plunged headlong into the upgrade, secure in the knowledge I had daily and weekly backups, plus a known-good snapshot.

The first problem I encountered, was that the global “yum -y update” failed, due to conflicts between the currently running version of MySQL (5.0.27) and 5.0.45, which was marked as part of the moonshine package. It borked, spewed a ream of files that conflicted, and exited.

I tried to manually update to the newer MySQL, but it refused with the same errors. I tried a few other packages in the F7 list, and they worked OK, so I reasoned there was a way around this silly failure.

First, I exported my data from the running MySQL process, and offloaded it. This was in addition to the aforementioned backups SliceHost provides. Never hurts to have too many backups

Next, I stopped and frakking un-installed mysql. Poof! I then tried to install it, via “yum -y install mysql mysql-devel mysql-server” but it complained about ncurses conflicts. I said to myself I was heading down a rabbit hole, but bravely tried to update ncurses separately, and it worked! I was then able to install MySQL with no problems (other than having to take this circuitous route)

I started mysql up again (sudo service mysqld start) and checked that the data was fine. 5 by 5.

After that, I was able to run the full update as initially intended, and then I was drinking Moonshine! I later had the same-ole hassles with upgrading Ruby Gems, due to a scenario where the memory gem needs to process the self upgrade runs the slice out of physical memory, thrashes the swap to death, and basically never completes the upgrade. The cure is to not use “gem update—system” but to wget the source package from rubyforge, untar it, and issue the “sudo ruby setup.rb” command. After that you’re golden!

It’s late, so tomorrow I’ll upgrade to Fedora 8; just in time for the release of Fedora 9.

From all indications, moving to eight will be more of the same, just pleasantly less so.

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