[WBEL-users] another wbel3 to 4 question

[Ted Pedersen]

Greetings all,

This might be a rather extreme form of White Box success, but we've
been running so
smoothly for the last few years that I actually forgot we had White
Box installed. :)
It was only when attempting to finally upgrade from WBEL 3 to 4 that I
remembered
(due to the little White Box references in the yum messages).

I tried to do the yum upgrade, but that didn't work, so I started
hunting around a bit, and I saw
the mail from this list in January from Per about this same issue, and
it sounds like the
recommendation is to get the CDs for WBEL 4 and do an upgrade from
those, rather than
mucking around with yum. We do have physical access, so we can do
that, and I just wanted to
ask Per or anyone else whose tried it lately how that went, and if
there are any pitfalls to
be on the lookout for. We have not upgraded *anything* on this system
for a few years now,
and I don't normally do a lot of upgrades, so I'm rusty as can be on
these things.

The reason that we want to do the upgrade in the first place is that
we are in the process
of trying to add memory, and we've been having trouble with that
(kernel panics once we
boot with the new memory using WBEL 3). We are currently on this kernel :

2.4.21-27.0.1.EL #1 SMP Mon Dec 20 18:35:36 EST 2004 x86_64 x86_64
x86_64 GNU/Linux

We are trying to go from 3 GB to 12 GB RAM on a Dell Precision 670. We
are replacing the
RAM completely and have 6 single rank 2GB sticks, and I think we got
the right kind of memory,
and so we thought it might just be time to upgrade the kernel, and
maybe that would take care
of whatever ails us.

In any case, just wanted to pick everyone's brains and find out the
best way to get to WBEL 4, and
also if anyone had similar issues with memory expansions in the past,
and if this kernel upgrade might
be expected to solve our troubles. Any thoughts on either or both
issue would be most appreciated.

Cordially,
Ted

-- 
Ted Pedersen
http://www.d.umn.edu/~tpederse