Installing RH over an existing install...

[agent007]

Hi guys,

I've been thinking about this for a long time now.....so here goes. Currently I'm running RH8.0. Lets say that RedHat releases RH10 in a couple of years. Also consider that most of the packages have got minor and major upgrades.

Is it advisable to install RH10 over RH8 (as in upgrade)? OR should I format the current partition wiping off everything and then do a clean install? This *would* prevent potential conflicts between files and dependancies correct? and what about performance?


thanks,
007

[Void Main]

I have been running Red Hat from their beginning. I have done updgrade installs over the many versions with varying degrees of success. It usually goes pretty well but personally I like a nice clean install so what I usually do is keep an extra partition around for the "next" version of Red Hat to come out. When it does come out I install it on the spare partition and keep the old version around for a while until I have everything that I want migrated over. I may leave it that way until the next version comes out then I install that new version on the old partition and keep alternating. I find I can do a clean install on the spare patition and migrate my /etc configurations fairly quickly. Once you are confident you have grabbed everything you want off the old partition you can use it as a work area until the next version of Red Hat comes out.

Another option is to just tar up "/etc /home /root" if you can't make a full backup, reformat and install on the original partition. but you may miss something that you would want back later (databases, etc). Another way is to keep "/home" on it's own partition so you can format and do a fresh install on the "/" partition without effecting your /home, but of course your users will all have to be recreated and permissions will be all screwed up unless you take care to recreate them with the same user numbers etc. But for the most part you can do an "Upgrade" and it will work just fine, especially if you are not machine a significant jump in versions.

It would still be wise to have a backup before doing an upgrade. If you do the multiple alternating partition thing like I do a backup isn't as important (as long as you know what you are doing). If you have a *good* backup, everything will go smoothly. If you don't have a backup things will go bad wrong. It's just the laws of nature.

[agent007]

I think backing up the /etc file cud land me into trouble......I mean /etc contains the rc0.d stuff so I would'nt want to overwrite the newer folder with the current one..

Here's what I'll do, backup the /root /home/user1 /home/user2
and just copy back the folders to /root /home/user1 /home/user2 etc after a format......

This should work fine correct?

thanks,
007

[Void Main]

I think you misunderstood me. I mean backup /etc but not restore the entire thing to the new installation. I use it for reference for my new configuration. You'll want to copy things like Samba shares, get usernames/IDs out of /etc/passwd, Apache configuration (vhosts etc) or anything else that you have customized. You certainly don't want to overwrite your new initscripts with old ones.