Tools/yum/YumUpgradeFaq

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Upgrading Fedora Using Yum

Caution

Although upgrades with yum have been tested and work, live upgrades are not recommended by the Fedora Project.If you are not prepared to resolve issues on your own if things break, you should probably use the recommend installation methods instead.With a typical installation, this method usually works well, but it can break third-party packages not available in the Fedora repositories.Please search the mailing list archives first if you run into problems.

The recommended installation method is detailed in the Installation Guide:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/fedora-install-guide-en/

The release notes also have some useful information:

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f8/en_US/sn-Installer.html#Upgrade-Related-Issues

Other details on upgrading Fedora is available from the wiki page DistributionUpgrades.

Participate

If you want to help make live upgrades work smoothly, join the Live Upgrade Special Interest Group at SIGs/LiveUpgrade.

Feedback

If you are upgrading using Yum and it shows up any general dependency issues, please file them in http://bugzilla.redhat.com.

Instructions to upgrade using yum

These instructions can be used directly for upgrading from version to version+1, but the principle is the same for all upgrades.

Read about common problems

Further down in this page there's a list of common problems. Some of them require attention before the upgrade.

Clean Stuff

Run the following command first to ensure that you dont run into any residual dependency issues

Tip: Review and remove all .rpmsave and .rpmnew files before and after upgrading. Merge and resolve the changes found by the following script:

 for a in $(find /etc /var -name '*.rpm?*'); do b=${a%.rpm?*}; diff -u $a $b; done  

Now is a good time to remove packages you don't use - especially non-standard packages.

If you have packages from 3rd party repos installed then make sure that these repos are enabled and ready for the new version. The upgrade might fail if there are outdated dependencies from packages not backed by a yum repo or backed by a repo which isn't ready for the new version.

Tip: Find and review "lost" packages. You can find orphaned packages (ie packages not in the repositories anymore) with the tool package-cleanup from the yum-utils package

 yum install yum-utils; package-cleanup --orphans

Old packages with a failing "%postun" script will remain partly installed. Remove them with

 rpm -e package-name-and-version

It's often helpful to run this command after the update, too.

Make sure you have the yum-fastestmirror package installed so that yum uses the "best" mirror.

 yum install yum-fastestmirror

Then remove all traces of the version you are leaving from the yum cache in /var/cache/yum.

 yum clean all

Switch repositories

Update the package deciding which yum repositories to use:

 rpm -Uhv ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/<ReleaseNumber>/Fedora/<Arch>/os/Packages/fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm

For Fedora 9, as an example,

 rpm -Uhv ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/9/Everything/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm 

(The archicture doesn't matter for this noarch package.)

Make sure the new repo files isn't placed as .rpmnew files, perhaps by

 mv /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
 mv /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo

Also make sure that all the 3rd party repos you normally use point to the repository for the new Fedora release.

Do the upgrade

It is a good idea to do this outside the graphical environment. Log out of your graphical desktop and then go to a text console <key>Ctrl + Alt +F1</key>.

log in as root, and go into runlevel 3

 telinit 3

Tip: Update important packages first. You can start try to update the update machinery first with

 yum update rpm\* yum\*

Another idea is to start with glibc. In both cases dependencies might however expand it to an almost full upgrade anyway. And doing a full upgrade might be more safe. YMMV.

Upgrade all packages with

 yum upgrade

yum might complain about conflicts or requirements. That is probably because you have used non-standard repositores or installed non-standard packages manually. Try to guess which packages causes the problem (or at least is a part of the dependency chain) - uninstall them and try again. Remember to install the packages again if they are essential.

Ensure that all (new) essential packages from the new version is installed with

 yum groupupdate Base

You might want to update other groups too (see yum grouplist ).

For example

 yum groupupdate "GNOME Desktop Environment" \
         "Development Tools" "Server Configuration Tools" \
         "Hardware Support" "Sound and Video" \
         "Graphical Internet" "Fonts" \
         "Games and Entertainment" "Printing Software" \
         "Administration Tools" "Office/Productivity" "System Tools"

Before booting you should usually install the bootloader from your new grub by running

 grub-install BOOTDEVICE

- where BOOTDEVICE usually is /dev/sda.

Version specific notes

Fedora 8 -> Fedora 9

• If you are running as a xen Host (Dom0) you should not upgrade to Fedora 9. http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-xen/2008-March/msg00013.html
• Upgrading the thunderbird package will fail. The current workaround is "yum remove thunderbird; yum install thunderbird".
• If you are upgrading to Fedora 9 and use emacs, you must upgrade to the latest version of emacs for your prior release to ensure a clean upgrade. Fedora 8 users must have emacs-22.1-10.fc8 or later, while Fedora 7 users must have emacs-22.1-7.fc7. Bug report here.
• Due to the switch from sysvinit to Upstart, it is recommended that users who do a upgrade on a live filesystem to Fedora 9 reboot soon afterwards. If you do not reboot, you may want to take careful note of any '/etc/inittab.rpmsave' or '/etc/inittab.rpmnew' files. When rebooting after an upgrade then be aware that sysvinit that was used to start the system can't be used to shut it down.

(One test upgrade from Fedora 7 was problematic for several (potentially irrelevant) reasons. Upgrading from X seems to be a bad idea. YMMV. More testing to come.)

Fedora 7 -> Fedora 8

• New pulseaudio and flash support packages must be installed manually:

 yum groupinstall sound-and-video gnome-desktop (if you are using Gnome)
 yum groupinstall sound-and-video kde-desktop (if you are using KDE)
 yum install libflashsupport paman padevchooser

• The Fedora 7 avahi packagage fails to uninstall; remove it manually with

 rpm -e --noscripts avahi-0.6.17-1.fc7

• On 64 bit machines (x86_64) you may have to remove some 32 bit libraries. For example dbus:

 yum erase dbus.i386

• You may find it easier to use the yum shell to stack these commands in a single transaction:

 yum shell
 > erase dbus.i386
 > update
 > run

• A lot of KDE packages are no longer multilib in F8. If you are on x86_64, you will need to erase the i386 versions of these packages by hand, like so:

 yum erase kde{accessibility{,-devel},base,edu,graphics,multimedia{,-extras},network,sdk,utils{,-devel},webdev}.i386

• Various other packages including Beryl are no longer in F8 and not obsoleted:

 yum erase beryl\*

Fedora Core 6 -> Fedora 7

• Fedora 7 replaces the old IDE subsystem with libata. Drive device names which previously started /dev/hd.. will become /dev/sd.. after the upgrade. /dev/hda1 will usually become /dev/sda1 although there may not be a direct relationship between the old and new device names, hdd will not necessarily become sdd for example. Be sure to change all references to /dev/hd.. in your config, especially /etc/fstab before you reboot. It may be simpler to refer to filesystems by label (check out the programs blkid, tune2fs, and mlabel).

LVM Volumes are not affected.

• The libata layer represents all hard disks as SCSI disks, which are limited to 15 partitions in the kernel. IDE hard disks with more than 15 partitions are not supported in Fedora 7.

• If the system hangs after reboot with a GRUB message, then boot into rescue mode, chroot /mnt/sysimage, and run something like grub-install /dev/sda - check that it uses the right device mapping. [TODO: If this is a common problem, then it should be a general advice to do this before booting. Do you or do you now know when it happens? MadsKiilerich]

• On a system which has been upgraded from releases prior to FC6 you may need to remove up2date and rhnlib rpm -e rhnlib up2date

• If you see the message package gpm-1.20.1-84.fc6 (which is newer than gpm-1.20.1-83.fc7) is already installed when performing a yum update uninstall and reinstall the gpm package.

• If you had installed Suns jre it might be removed during upgrade. Be aware that jre-6u1/jre-1.6.0_01-fcs requires compat-libstdc++-33.

Fedora Core 5 -> Fedora Core 6

• After upgrading, you cannot use the DVD ISO loopback mounted as a repository directly (e.g. no baseurl=file:///mnt/fc6/) because the repodata files contain URLs of type media:// which yum can't handle. You can use the loopback-mounted DVD for the initial upgrade from FC5 -> FC6, just not thereafter. After removing the baseurl=file:/// option from your fedora-core.repo file, remember to yum clean all.

Fedora Core 4 -> Fedora Core 5

• Before upgrading update your kernel first.

 yum install kernel 

• Make sure you have the latest kernel ABOVE 2.6.14 and uninstall all kernel versions before it, otherwise initscripts and a few other packages will conflict and prevent the ugprade. Use something like the command below

 yum remove kernel-2.6.14*

• Install fedora-release in the Fedora Core 5 version. Check our mirror sites for a faster download.

 rpm -Uhv http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm 

• Update your system

 yum update

• After upgrading, selinux permissions may be incorrect, causing interesting failures such as metacity not starting. As suggested below, to fix this, run

 /sbin/fixfiles relabel

Fedora Core 3 -> Fedora Core 4

• make sure you're on the latest version of yum for FC3:

 yum update yum

• Download fedora-release for FC4:
• wget http://yourmirrorhere/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/$yourarch/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
• rpm -Uvh /path/to/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
• yum update (This will start the upgradation process to FC4)
• Once you have updated, run: yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment" (change GNOME to KDE if appropriate). That'll get you some new packages that were added in FC4 like Evince and NetworkManager.
• Some new groups were added - yum grouplist - check out Eclipse and Java Development in particular.

Problems:

• Postgres database in FC4 has a newer incompatible format from the previous versions. Manual dump and restoration is required if you using this database. Look at the postgres documentation for more details on this.

• kernel requires kernel-utils (or vice-versa) run:

 yum update kernel
 reboot
 yum remove kernel-2.6.11\*FC3\*
 yum upgrade
 reboot

• Takes forever and a day and hangs at:

Reading repository metadata in from local files This means you have too much crap in your rpmdb and it's taking a while to go through it. Check out how many kernels you have installed: rpm -q kernel kernel-smp and remove the old ones you may also try running: rpm --rebuilddb and see if it helps any. I've found that removing old kernels and rebuilding the rpmdb helped this problem.

• x86_64 upgrade requires removal of certain i386 packages before update

 yum remove perl.i386
 TODO: Add list of bonobo i386 packages to remove here

• Error: Missing Dependency: libpython2.3.so.1.0 is needed by package koffice

koffice was removed from Fedora Core and not moved to extras - so there's no way to complete an upgrade to FC4 without removing it. run:

 yum remove koffice

then your update should complete.

• x86_64 systems seems to hang during "Running Transaction Test"

Seems related to Bug 155730 -- Maybe a update to the "rpm-4.3.3-3.0.fc3" (currently in updates-testing) might solve this. Ugly workaround (to be done as root):

 : > /var/log/lastlog

• GPG check fails with this message :

 warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID db42a60e
 public key not available for <some_package>
 Retrieving GPG key from file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora

The GPG key at file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora (0x4F2A6FD2) is already installed but is not the correct key for this package. Check that this is the correct key for the "Fedora Core 4 - i386 - Base" repository.

Edit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo and replace the line

 gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora

with:

 gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY

• SELinux gets messed up. I had to redownload the selinux-policy-targeted RPM from my mirror, do a forced uninstall of the old package, clean out the .rpmnew and .rpmsave files then install the new policy. Then I had to run "/sbin/fixfiles relabel" and wait. If I didn't do that, I found I couldn't log in.
• If SELinux does give you problems, it can be disabled on bootup by pressing "a" on the grub bootup menu, then adding "enforcing=off" to the arguments list.
• RPM complains about missing diskspace, but there is a lot free. If you are really sure your diskspace is enough, set

 diskspacecheck=0

in /etc/yum.conf. The RPM transaction will need a lot of diskspace temporarily (much more than one might think), so be careful. Don't forget to remove that later after the upgrade.

• Yum complains about files conflicting in the GCC package. This system was upgraded from Fedora Core 1. Remove the gcc32 package:

 sudo rpm -e gcc32

• Some of your modules don't load after the upgrade. When you investigate modprobe doesn't work as expected. Run depmod:

 sudo depmod -ae -F /boot/System.map-[your uname -a kernel version here] 

• Yum has been reported to be hanging after upgrading. Updating the pysqlite package might fix it.

Fedora Core 2 -> Fedora Core 3

Go here for most of this info: http://linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/misc/fc2-fc3-update-with-yum.txt

Fedora Core 1 -> Fedora Core 2

Just Upgrade using anaconda - save yourself a world of pain. But if you really want to try, there's these hints by Seth Vidal: http://linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/misc/fc1-fc2-yum-hints.txt

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