FedUp

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This page is outdated and is only retained for historical reference
FedUp (FEDora UPgrader) was the official tool for upgrading between Fedora releases, until the introduction of the DNF system upgrade plugin. FedUp is now obsolete and should not be used in any circumstances.

What is FedUp?

FedUp (FEDora UPgrader) is the official tool for upgrading Fedora installations. Anaconda, the Fedora installer program, has no built-in upgrade functionality. Upgrade from one release of Fedora to the immediate successor has been completely delegated to FedUp. Fedup may use a network repository or a DVD image for the package sources.

What Does FedUp do?

The FedUp system consists of two parts - the client, used to download packages and prepare for the upgrade and a pre-boot environment. The pre-boot environment does the actual upgrade using systemd and dnf (or yum). More details are available in a blog post written by FedUp's primary author.

Files are downloaded to /var/cache/system-upgrade and will be automatically cleaned up after the upgrade process is finished.

The FedUp Client

The FedUp client runs on the system to be upgraded. It gathers the packages needed for upgrade in addition to downloading the required initramfs and kernel needed for the actual upgrade. At this time, only the fedup command-line interface is implemented but a GUI interface is expected...sometime.

The Upgrade

The actual upgrade takes place when the system has been rebooted after running the FedUp client. The filesystems are mounted during boot, the already downloaded packages are installed and some upgrade-related tasks are performed. During the upgrade process, a special plymouth theme is used which has a progress bar to indicate current upgrade progress.

The Aftermath

Once the upgrade is complete, FedUp will reboot the system automatically. This is so you can run this part of the process unattended and later return to the upgraded system, if you leave any bootable media attached to the system during the upgrade process, once the upgrade has completed, the system may boot from that medium instead of the hard disk. If you return to see the Fedora installer or something similar...that's probably what happened!

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I report issues that I find with upgrades?

First see Common F21 bugs or Common F22 bugs to check if the problem is a very prominent issue we already know of. If it is not there, the component for reporting problems depends on the exact issue that you hit:

Issues with upgrade preparation

If you hit issues when using the FedUp client (fedup) before reboot, search or file a bug against FedUp using the version you are upgrading from.

Issues During Upgrade

If you hit issues after upgrade preparation and the initial reboot, search or file a bug against fedup-dracut using the version you are upgrading to.

Issues After Upgrade

If you hit issues after upgrade with a specific package, file a bug against the package with which you are having issues.

How do I Debug Issues During Upgrade?

A troubleshooting and debug guide will be written at some point and linked to from here.

Does FedUp verify the software it runs or installs during upgrade?

Yes. The package signing keys for newer Fedora releases are sent to older Fedora releases in order to allow FedUp to verify the integrity of the packages it downloads. You can disable this function with the --nogpgcheck parameter if you need to do so for any reason.

Will packages in third party repositories be upgraded?

Yes, if they are set up like regular yum/dnf repositories and do not hard code the repository path. Commonly-used third party repositories usually work fine, but if you attempt to upgrade prior to or soon after an official Fedora release, they may not have updated their repository paths yet, and FedUp may be unable to find their packages. This will usually not prevent the upgrade running successfully, though, and you can update the packages from the third-party repository later.

Can I use FedUp to upgrade to a pre-release (e.g. a beta)?

Yes. After a Fedora release has been branched, it should be possible to upgrade to it using FedUp. It should also work after the Alpha and Beta releases. Of course, this function is as subject to temporary breakage as is any other aspect of a pre-release.

See this email to the Fedora devel mailing list for more details.

How Can I Upgrade My System with FedUp?

As alluded to above, there are three parts to upgrading with FedUp - preparation, execution and cleanup.

Before you start doing anything, be sure to have a look at Common F21 bugs#Upgrade_issues or Common F22 bugs#Upgrade_issues and read about the most common bugs found.

Upgrading from Fedora 20 or earlier: Products

In order to select one of the new Fedora flavors, FedUp has a new option, --product=<PRODUCT>. When upgrading from Fedora 20 or earlier to Fedora 21 or later, you must pass this --product option.

You can use the values workstation, server, cloud or nonproduct. If you upgrade to Workstation or Server, all the packages that are included in a default installation of that flavor will be installed after the upgrade (that is, any that are not currently installed will be added). Your firewall configuration will also be reset to the default for that flavor (in the Workstation case, this is a fairly open configuration). If you do not wish these things to happen, use the value nonproduct.

Preparing for the Upgrade

1. Do a full system update and reboot to ensure that any kernel changes are running
2. Install/Update fedup
3. Usually, it is best to try first with the latest fedup available in the stable update repository for the release you are running. If you encounter problems with the upgrade, and a newer fedup is available in the updates-testing repository for your current release, you may wish to try with this newer version: yum --enablerepo=updates-testing install fedup or with dnf: dnf --enablerepo=updates-testing install fedup at the command line)
4. Make sure the system is running a Fedora issued kernel if possible -- if you use your own kernel and it does not have a corresponding initramfs, the upgrade will fail.

There are three options for sourcing the packages needed for upgrade - using a network repository, a local ISO file or a local device (hard drive, optical disk etc).

Network upgrade is strongly recommended
It is strongly recommended to use the network upgrade instead of offline update modes (ISO, local device). Network upgrade will ensure you receive the latest packages from the target release. If you use local media containing older packages, you might end up with a mixture of packages from your former and target release, and the system might not work properly until you fully update it after reboot (if it boots at all).

Network

Using a network source is the easiest method of upgrading and will pull in updates while upgrading - eliminating the potential issue if your current system has a newer kernel version than the Fedora release to which you are upgrading.

Start the upgrade prep by executing following command:

• sudo yum update fedup fedora-release

or with dnf for Fedora 22 and later versions:

• sudo dnf upgrade fedup fedora-release

If you are upgrading from Fedora 20 to Fedora 21, run the following command:

• sudo fedup --network 21 --product=[workstation | server| cloud | nonproduct]

If you are upgrading from Fedora 21 to Fedora 22 or above, run the following command:

• sudo fedup --network 22

Once the preparations have completed, check the /var/log/fedup.log file if any errors show up in the output from fedup

ISO File

Older Fedora releases included an installation image with a large number of packages, making it suitable for upgrading some systems. Upgrading by booting this image was possible until Fedora 17, and using the image for upgrades with Fedup was supported until Fedora 20. Beginning with Fedora 21, the universal DVD image is not produced; as of now, there is no media available for offline upgrades.

Other Device

Optical drives and other mountable storage can also be used as a package source for upgrade preparations.

1. Mount the source material
   • For the sake of example, we will assume that this source is mounted at /mnt/fedora but you can mount it anywhere as long as you replace /mnt/fedora in the command below with the actual mounted location of the upgrade source.
2. Start the upgrade preparations by executing the following command
   • sudo fedup --device /mnt/fedora --debuglog=fedupdebug.log
3. Once the preparations have completed, check the fedupdebug.log file if any errors show up in the output from fedup

Executing the Upgrade

1. Reboot the system if fedup has completed without error.
2. Once the system reboots, there should be a new entry in the GRUB menu titled System Upgrade.
3. Select the System Upgrade option from the GRUB menu
   • Remark: If the System Upgrade item is not shown in the grublist at boot, it is most often caused by having an incompatible grub, most often installed by another Linux distribution you may have in your multiboot environment. To correct this quickly: reinstall grub:
     1. grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
     2. grub2-install /dev/sda (replace /dev/sda by any other device you prefer to boot from)
4. The system should boot into the upgrade process and a plymouth boot screen should be displayed
   • There is a root shell on virtual terminal two (VT2) so you can tinker with the system if something goes wrong. (To disable this, boot with rd.upgrade.noshell)
   • Press 'esc' to view a more detailed log. If you switch back to the graphical progress indicator, it may show 0% for the remainder of the upgrade but that does not mean the upgrade has stopped.
5. Once the upgrade process has completed, the system will reboot and an option to boot Fedora 41 will be on the grub menu

Cleaning Up Post Upgrade

It is worth rebuilding the RPM DB to prevent RPMDB checksum error when doing a distribution sync:

sudo rpm --rebuilddb

There are a collection of post-upgrade things to do. Some of which are fixed by doing a distro sync:

sudo yum distro-sync --setopt=deltarpm=0

If you have upgraded to Fedora 22 or above, run the following command instead:

(If you run dnf the first time and you're behind a proxy add your proxy settings to /etc/dnf/dnf.conf)

sudo dnf distro-sync --setopt=deltarpm=0

The rpmconf tool searches for .rpmnew, .rpmsave and .rpmorig files and asks you what to do with them: Keep current version, place back old version, watch the diff or merge.

sudo yum install rpmconf

If you have upgraded to Fedora 22 or above, run the following command instead:

sudo dnf install rpmconf

sudo rpmconf -a

If you are using google-chrome from the Google repository, you must re-install google-chrome due to a packaging bug on the Google side of things. Make sure to adjust the command to the build type you would like to install:

sudo yum remove google-chrome-\* && sudo yum install google-chrome-[beta,stable,unstable]

If you have upgraded to Fedora 22 or above, run the following command instead:

sudo dnf remove google-chrome-\* && sudo dnf install google-chrome-[beta,stable,unstable]

Docs TODO

• Write fedup troubleshooting and debug guide
• add note about blob drivers if needed