Upgrading Fedora using package manager

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/install-guide/

Preupgrade is a new upgrade method that does in-place upgrade. Refer to

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade

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 http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/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

1. Read about common problems

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

2. Clean Stuff

Clean up
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 diff -u $a ${a%.rpm?*}; 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 The upgrade might fail if there are outdated dependencies from packages not backed by a yum repo or backed by a repo which isn't ready for the new version.

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

3. Switch repositories

Update the packages that decide 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 architecture 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.

4. 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

ctrl + alt + F1

log in as root, and go into runlevel 3

telinit 3

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 repositories or installed non-standard packages manually. Try to guess which packages cause 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

/sbin/grub-install BOOTDEVICE

- where BOOTDEVICE usually is /dev/sda (If you get an error '/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive' from that, then try /sbin/grub-install --recheck /dev/sda.)

Also, the order of init scripts could have changed from the previous version, a command to reset the order is:

cd /etc/rc.d/init.d; for f in *; do /sbin/chkconfig $f resetpriorities; done

Version specific notes

Fedora 8 -> Fedora 9

• If you are running as a xen Host (Dom0) you should not upgrade to Fedora 9. [1]
• 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.

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 (for example hdd does not necessarily become sdd). Before you reboot be sure to change all references to /dev/hd.. in your config, especially /etc/fstab - where it however may be simpler to refer to filesystems by label (check out the programs blkid, tune2fs, and mlabel). LVM Volume names are not affected. In /boot/grub/device.map change /dev/hd.. to /dev/sd.. before running grub-install - and don't change (hd0). Changing /boot/grub/grub.conf may also be required.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

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

• Update your system

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

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
</code> in <code>/etc/yum.conf</code>.
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:
<pre>
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 <code>uname -a</code> 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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