[WBEL-users] Upgrading from Whitebox to RHEL

[Robert Heller]

At Sat, 28 Apr 2007 10:31:36 -0700 Scott Silva <ssilva at sgvwater.com> wrote:

> 
> Mike B. spake the following on 4/27/2007 6:13 PM:
> > At 4/27/2007 01:54 PM, Scott Silva wrote:
> > 
> >> Most configuration files are in the /etc directory.  If you install
> >> something
> >> that stores its config files somewhere else, make a symlink into /etc
> >> for it
> >> so you can just tar the /etc directory occasionally.
> > 
> > That's the sort of idea that experienced folks know, but us newbies
> > don't always think of...even if we know about symlinks.  Thanks!
> > 
> > A lot of stuff seems to keep config and other customized files in /var
> > (DNS, WWW, etc.).  Is there any other location that's common for storing
> > such things?
> > 
> >>  If you put your /home
> >> directory on a separate filesystem, it can be left untouched during
> >> the new OS
> >> install.
> > 
> > That concept carried over from my decades of VAX/VMS and OpenVMS
> > experience...so that's how I set up my server way back when.
> > 
> >> I have done some in place upgrades, but I will usually make a list of
> >> all the
> >> installed rpms with rpm -qa |sort >rpmlist.txt before and after the
> >> upgrade,
> >> and compare the list with a log from a fresh install in a vmware vm.
> >> That way
> >> I can look for orphaned rpms.
> > 
> > What about things that got installed without RPMs?  Things built
> > locally, from source that wasn't RPM'd or whatever?  Is there a simple
> > way to find it all, or do you just have to be organized from day one and
> > keep a database (even if it's just a flat text file)?
> > 
> > I think part of my problem is that when I first set up my RH 5.2 system
> > I was brand new to linux and had almost zero unix experience.  I was so
> > overwhelmed just getting things to work at all that I had no spare
> > cycles left over for worrying about future maintenance or upgrades.  RH
> > made upgrading easy...just make a backup for safety (copy to another HD
> > and upgrade the copy) and do the upgrade.  That's how I got along up to
> > 7.2 where I am now.  About the time I was going to upgrade again RH
> > changed direction and I've been frozen in time ever since except for
> > necessary individual upgrades, like Sendmail.  It's time to start over,
> > but I don't want to lose too much of what I had set up already...though
> > if that happens, so be it, but I'd prefer to do better on the *next* big
> > change at least.
> > 
> > Thanks for the ideas!
> > 
> > -- Mike B.
> You are saying that this system has been upgraded from 5.2 all the way to 7.2?
> Is the hardware even capable of moving to a new distro?
> I would definitely back it up somewhere and do a fresh install. So much has
> changed since then, and many of your old configuration files will need some
> editing to work properly.

You would be supprised at how well *new* Linux distros work on really
old hardware.  I've installed CentOS 4.3 on a P133 Laptop.  It works
just fine, except for the sound card, which is the only reason I run WBL
3.0 on it (it is dual boot, WBL 3.0 and CentOS 4.3).

I've done a number of 5.2 => 6.2 => 7.3 => 9 upgrades and it is not
really a problem. Yes, lots crud accumulates. At some point disks got
too small, so we put in new disks as second disks and did 'fresh'
installs and merged info from the old disk's /etc files and did
disk-to-disk transfers of the /home and other data file systems.

I've also done several disk upgrades and OS upgrades *at the same time*.
With SCSI it is easy to keep adding disks.

> 

-- 
Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
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