Owl River Company

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cAos-1 (base install) to CentOS-3 Upgrade steps

1. Do a base cAos-1 install (Use the floppy.img from here for cAos-1; burn it thus under *nix:
   $ sudo dd if=./floppy.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 ... or use rawrite under legacy operating systems); add some stuff base cAos-1 lacks, and remove some other: yum -y install crontabs mailx sendmail sendmail-cf rpm -e postfix
2. Let's take a couple snapshots of what the system looked like 'before' in terms of installed packages:
   cd /root/ # rpm -qa | sort > /root/initial-package_with_versions.txt # rpm -qa --qf '%{name} \n' | sort \ > /root/initial-package.txt #
   
3. IMPORTANT: Please, please, if you are starting with anything but a fresh install, make full backups of content on that system before starting. Good candidates to rsync to another host are:
   • /etc/
   • /root/
   • /home/
   • /usr/local/bin/
   • those parts of /var/ with unique data
   
   
4. Let's say that again: You must take current backups. The most common cause of problems is running out of space, mid-upgade; if you have backups, it is usually just inconvenient. Without them, things can turn into a disaster. Please.
   
   
5. Get some problem (problematic as to the upgrade to CentOS, not otherwise a problem) packages out of the cAos-1 install for the moment; as a general rule, if one runs into dependency problems later on, pull the offending package out temporarily, and add it back once the upgrade is done.
   rpm -e `rpm -qa --qf '%{name}\n' | grep Image` (ImageMagick is a problem as Red Hat chose not to include all the components of ImageMagick in RHEL-3)
   
   
6. Set up a place for the ISO contents to live for the upgrade; we are going to use the 'file' yum method for reliability and speed:
   mkdir /home/ISO/
7. Successively mount centos ISOs and cp /mnt/cdrom/Redhat/RPMS/* /home/ISO/
8. Build the yum archive cd /home/ISO/ ; yum-arch .
9. (040330 transitional -- centos-3.1 (final) perl is an issue) -- errata archive used in next step
   
   
10. Edit /etc/yum.conf thus:
    
    

    [main] cachedir=/var/cache/yum debuglevel=2 logfile=/var/log/yum.log pkgpolicy=newest distroverpkg=caos-release installonlypkgs=linux linux-smp kernel kernel-smp [centos-3] name=centos-3 baseurl=file://localhost/home/ISO/ # http://mirror.caosity.org/centos-3/3.1/i386/ [centos-3-errata] name=centos-3-errata baseurl=http://caos2.caosity.org/build8/testing/i386/RPMS/

    
    
11. And make a backup copy, as the upgrade does not honor this as a configuration file cp /etc/yum.conf /etc/yum.conf-centos-UG
12. Do the upgrade yum -y upgrade
13. Restore the now missing /etc/yum.conf cp /etc/yum.conf-centos-UG /etc/yum.conf
14. Confirm that you have a kernel rpm -qa | grep kernel
15. If absent, force a kernel in manually cd /home/ISO/Redhat/RPMS/ ; ls kernel* rpm -ivh kernel-(whatever)
16. Disable kudzu at boot time chkconfig kudzu off (it hangs on first boot on our test chassis)
    
    
17. Manually update system 'release' rpm -e caos-release ; rpm -Uvh centos-release*
18. Manually update /boot/grub/grub.conf to prefer the Centos kernel
    
    
19. Get a mouse daemon into the system yum -y install gpm
20. Disable gpm at boot time until configured chkconfig gdm off (it hangs on boot)