Owl River Company

Your IP is: 38.107.191.100

Using a local 'upgradeany' to move from RHL 9, RHEL 3, RHAS 21, or cAos 1 to CentOS 4

    http://www.owlriver.com/projects/yum/

1. Set up a local FTP mirror of the ISOS, using lftp:

   [root@ftp ~]# cat lftp-centos4-iso.conf_
   #
   #	Get the Centos 4 ISOs
   #
   mirror -e -c  \
           ftp://bugs.osu.edu/pub/Linux/Centos/4.0/isos/i386       \
           /var/ftp/pub/mirror/centos/centos-4/4.0/isos
   #
   #
   #         -I CentOS-3.4-i386-disc*                              \
   #         -I MD5SUMS                                            \
   #
   #
   

   with a command like: lftp -f lftp-centos4-iso.conf_
2. And grab the updates as well, using lftp:

   [root@ftp ~]# cat lftp-Centos-40-updates.conf
   #
   #       Get the Centos 4 updates
   #
   mirror -c -e \
           http://mirror.centos.org/centos-4/4.0/updates/i386/RPMS \
           /var/ftp/pub/mirror/centos/centos-4/4.0/updates/i386/RPMS
   #
   #       The following line is for our yum-arch and
   #       createrepo logic
   #
   # yum: /var/ftp/pub/mirror/centos/centos-4/4.0/updates/i386/RPMS
   #
   

   with a command in the crontab for root like:
   

   55 6 * * *	lftp -f /root/lftp-Centos-40-updates.conf 
   

   We actually use a more complex, site local script to do this, which also uses the content at: # yum: (etc) to also automatically update our yum-arch and createrepo yum archive headers. See the README at ftp://ftp.owlriver.com/pub/mirror/active-release/ for more gory details.
   
3. Loop mount and hang them on a local host (not the one to be upgraded) for local FTP access
   
   See the code at:

        ftp://ftp.owlriver.com/pub/mirror/ORC/k12ltsp/
   

   in install-from-iso.sh and ORCsetPXE
4. As root, make a directory on the host to be upgraded, and retrieve the following files:
   

    	mkdir /boot/upgradeany/
    	cd /boot/upgradeany/
    	lftp (local mirror)
               get /pub/install/ftpinstall/images/pxeboot/*
   

   [herrold@centos-4 ~]$ lftp ftp
   lftp ftp:~> cd pub/install/ftpinstall/images/pxeboot/
   cd ok, cwd=/pub/install/ftpinstall/images/pxeboot
   lftp ftp:/pub/install/ftpinstall/images/pxeboot> ls
   lrwxrwxrwx    1 0        0              51 Apr 07 02:17 README
    	-> ../../../../loop/ftpinstall/1/images/pxeboot/README
   lrwxrwxrwx    1 0        0              55 Apr 07 02:17 
   initrd.img ->
    	../../../../loop/ftpinstall/1/images/pxeboot/initrd.img
   lrwxrwxrwx    1 0        0              52 Apr 07 02:17 
   vmlinuz ->
    	../../../../loop/ftpinstall/1/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz
   lftp ftp:/pub/install/ftpinstall/images/pxeboot>
   

   which gets initrd.img and vmlinuz into that directory.
5. Edit /boot/grub/grub.conf to add a stanza one thus:

   title upgradeany
            root (hd0,0)
            kernel /upgradeany/vmlinuz upgradeany
            initrd /upgradeany/initrd.img
   

6. Reboot and boot option 1 rather than the default option 0.
7. Answer the questions.
8. Upgrade completed.
9. Log in and get the updates in place:

    	cd /usr/share/doc/centos-release-4/
    	rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY
    	rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-centos4
    	yum -y upgrade
   

10. Make sure you are on the centos-announce mailing list.
11. Please report issues or successes here or to me directly.