[WBEL-users] Can't upgrade RH8

[Phil Schaffner]

On Sun, 2004-03-28 at 23:27, Mark Reynolds wrote:
> My understanding is that there is no 'upgrade'
> option, period.

It is possible to upgrade - have done a RH73 to WBEL upgrade (thanks to
William Hooper for the suggestion) by selecting the "linux upgradeany"
boot switch with anaconda.  See the link
  https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-3-Manual/x8664-multi-install-guide/ap-bootopts.html

There are likely to be lots of obsolete RPM packages left over after the
upgrade.  Have found the following one-liner script to be useful in RPM
cleanups:

#!/bin/bash
# List_RPMS_by_Install_Time
rpm -qa --qf "%{INSTALLTIME} %{NAME} %{VERSION} %{RELEASE}\n" | sort -r
>RPMS_by_Install_Time

Look for everything in the output file below basesystem, setup and
redhat-logos packages and consider removing them if not needed, finding
replacement packages from other RHEL/WBEL sources, or building upgrades
from SRPMS as necessary.

Hard to argue against the value of a clean install, which is what we
ended up doing for our servers.

> I normally personally start with a new server,
> and then copy required stuff across.
> 
> I'm told many people do something similar, by 
> installing WBEL and RHEL to a new disk/partition,
> and then mounting the old partitions, from 
> your previous OS install. Of course, this
> method requires that you created all those
> dirs in the first place, so that you can mount
> and unmount in different place as required.
> 
> Obvious dirs in question would be /home & /usr
> or perhaps /usr/local. All depends.

Can also back up things like /etc, /home, /usr/local, and parts of /var
over the network if you have space on another machine and can't add
disks, or just don't want to mess with the hardware of the upgrade
target.