Upgrading Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core with yum

It is possible to upgrade your Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core system using yum instead of the CD/DVD-based install or upgrade option. Only experienced Red Hat/Fedora Core users should attempt this, as the yum upgrade process is not officially supported and may cause problems.

Theoretically, you should be able to upgrade from any Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core release to any Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core release with a yum-compatible repository (i.e. containing yum "header" files). I have successfully upgraded the following operating system releases using yum:

Red Hat Linux 7.2 to 9
Red Hat Linux 8.0 to 9
Red Hat Linux 8.0 to Fedora Core 2
Red Hat Linux 9 to Fedora Core 1
Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 2
Fedora Core 2 to Fedora Core 3
Fedora Core 3 to Fedora Core 4
Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 5

The steps are slightly different when upgrading to Fedora Core releases versus a Red Hat Linux release (i.e. through Red Hat Linux 9), so they are presented separately.

Before performing an upgrade with yum, please read the YumUpgradeFaq Wiki.

The basic steps for upgrading a system to the latest Fedora Core release using yum:

1. Install the fedora-release package from the new release
2. Run yum upgrade
3. Reboot

Upgrading to Fedora Core 5

The following steps were used to update a Fedora Core 4 system to Fedora Core 5 using yum.

1. Download and install the Fedora Core 5 version of fedora-release from one of the Fedora Core mirrors.

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

2. Upgrade to Fedora Core 5.
# yum -y upgrade

If this step fails, I recommend running the following command to capture all screen output to /tmp/yum_upgrade.

# yum upgrade 2>&1 | tee /tmp/yum_upgrade

Failures generally indicate that a currently-installed RPM has a dependency that cannot be satisfied with packages from the new Fedora Core release. Deprecated packages and packages from third party repositories may cause this problem.

The following generates a list of packages that may need to be removed prior to a successful yum upgrade.
$ perl -ne 'print "$1\n" if ((/Error: Missing Dependency:.*is needed by package (.*)$/) || (/Error: Package (.*?) needs.*, this is not available./))' /tmp/yum_upgrade | sort | uniq

If the initscripts package is returned, I recommend booting into the latest Fedora Core 4 kernel, removing all previous kernels, and running yum upgrade again.

3. Reboot the system to begin using Fedora Core 5.
# reboot

Upgrading to Fedora Core 4

The following steps were used to update a Fedora Core 3 system to Fedora Core 4 using yum.

1. Update yum to the latest Fedora Core 3 version.
# yum -y update yum

2. Download and install the Fedora Core 4 version of fedora-release from one of the Fedora Core mirrors.

Example:
# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm

3. Disable third-party yum repositories, if applicable.

In my configuration, I had the Dag, FreshRPMs, and Dries third-party yum repositories enabled. As of 2005/06/15, only the Dries repository caused an error message (i.e. it had not been updated with Fedora Core 4 packages or it did not have a Fedora Core 4 directory structure) so I will only disable that repository.

# echo "enabled=0" >> /etc/yum.repos.d/dries.repo

4. When upgrading to Fedora Core 4, the kernel must be upgraded before the rest of the packages.
# yum -y update kernel

Otherwise, you may receive the following error message:

--> Running transaction check
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-utils for package: kernel
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Missing Dependency: kernel-utils is needed by package kernel

5. Disable SELinux, if applicable, and reboot the system to begin using the Fedora Core 4 kernel. I ran into significant problems after this reboot when SELinux was enabled.

To disable SELinux:

# vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux

Change:
SELINUX=enforcing
-- or --
SELINUX=permissive

To:
SELINUX=disabled

# reboot

7. Remove the Fedora Core 3 kernel(s) to prevent the aforementioned kernel-utils package dependency error.
# yum remove kernel-2.6.\*FC3\*
# yum remove kernel-smp\*FC3\* (if you have one or more FC3 SMP kernels installed)

8. Continue the upgrade to Fedora Core 4.
# yum -y upgrade

Note: if you receive the following error, import the RPM-GPG-KEY.

warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID db42a60e
public key not available for caching-nameserver-7.3-3.noarch.rpm

# rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY

9. Reboot the system to begin using Fedora Core 4.

10. If applicable, re-enable SELinux by undoing the changes above, and reboot the system to use SELinux.

User-contributed notes on Upgrading to Fedora Core 4

On 2005/07/16, Jay Thorne wrote:

Before you upgrade the kernel, you need to upgrade mkinitrd, otherwise
the initrd that the kernel install process makes is in the old format
and the new kernel will not boot; it dies with a oops.

# yum -y upgrade mkinitrd

Otherwise, this procedure works well. Good work.

Also, in the x86_64 case, you need to specifically upgrade
libselinux.i386 and libselinux.x86_64 before the kernel upgrade, or the
upgrade will fail with a conflict.

# yum -y upgrade libselinux.i386 libselinux.x86_64

Thanks for Wim Cos for writing on 2005/06/16 and providing the steps to update yum to the latest FC3 version and for the steps to remove FC3 SMP kernels, if applicable.

Upgrading to Fedora Core 3

Before proceeding, please read Seth Vidal's post (Seth is the author of yum) to the fedora-test-list mailing list regarding upgrading from FC2 to FC3 using yum.

1. Verify that the Fedora Project gpg key is installed.

$ rpm -q gpg-pubkey-6b8d79e6-3f49313d
gpg-pubkey-6b8d79e6-3f49313d

If this key is not installed, and you are running Fedora Core, you may install it with:
# rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora

If this key is not installed, and you are not running Fedora Core, you may install it with:
# rpm --import http://fedora.redhat.com/about/security/4F2A6FD2.txt

2. Download the Fedora Core 3 version of fedora-release and yum from one of the Fedora Core mirrors.

Example:

$ wget http://fedora.glorb.com/core/3/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-3-8.i386.rpm
$ wget http://fedora.glorb.com/core/3/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/yum-2.1.11-3.noarch.rpm

3. Install the Fedora Core 3 version of fedora-release and yum.

You may need to use the --force flag when installing the RPMs as /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources from the Fedora Core 3 fedora-release conflicts with up2date.

# rpm -Uvh fedora-release-3-8.i386.rpm yum-2.1.11-3.noarch.rpm
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
        file /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources from install of fedora-release-3-8 conflicts with file from package up2date-4.3.19-1

# rpm -Uvh --force fedora-release-3-8.i386.rpm yum-2.1.11-3.noarch.rpm

4. Upgrade to Fedora Core 3.

# yum upgrade

After several minutes, yum will present a large list of packages that will be upgraded, newly installed, and obsoleted. Choose "y" to download and install the packages.

Is this ok [y/N]: y

Possible problem:

When upgrading from Fedora Core 2 to Fedora Core 3 on one of my systems, yum upgrade experienced dependency problems with many packages, likely due to this bug in rpm. rpm 4.3.1-0.3 was installed when this problem occurred.

Example:
Error: Requiring package gnome-vfs2-2.8.2-8.i386 not in transaction set nor in rpmdb

Installing the Fedora Core 3 versions of rpm (4.3.2-21) and its dependencies (rpm-python, rpm-build, rpm-devel) and re-running yum upgrade fixed the problem.

5. Reboot the system to begin using Fedora Core 3.

Note: you may want to modify /boot/grub/grub.conf and choose the new 2.6.9 kernel (uniprocessor or SMP) as the default kernel as yum upgrade will not modify the default kernel chosen by the grub bootloader. Remember that grub counts the first listed kernel as number 0.

/boot/grub/grub.conf after yum upgrade:

default=2
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667smp)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667smp ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667smp.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.6-1.435.2.3smp)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.6-1.435.2.3smp ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.6.6-1.435.2.3smp.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.6-1.435.2.3)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.6-1.435.2.3 ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.6.6-1.435.2.3.img

/boot/grub/grub.conf after manual modification:

default=1
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667smp)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667smp ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667smp.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.6-1.435.2.3smp)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.6-1.435.2.3smp ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.6.6-1.435.2.3smp.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.6-1.435.2.3)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.6-1.435.2.3 ro root=LABEL=/
        initrd /initrd-2.6.6-1.435.2.3.img

Upgrading to Fedora Core 2

You may want to read the following notes from the yum author about upgrading from Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 2:
http://linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/misc/fc1-fc2-yum-hints.txt

Here are the steps I used to upgrade a system from Fedora Core 1 to Fedora Core 2:

1. Install the Fedora Core 2 version of yum and fedora-release:

# rpm -Uvh ftp://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/yum-2.0.7-1.1.noarch.rpm \ ftp://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core/2/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-2-4.i386.rpm

2. If yum was already installed prior to the upgrade, backup your old /etc/yum.conf file and replace /etc/yum.conf with /etc/yum.conf.rpmnew.

# mv /etc/yum.conf /etc/yum.conf.`date +%m.%d.%y`
# mv /etc/yum.conf.rpmnew /etc/yum.conf

3. Edit /etc/yum.conf. Choose a mirror from http://fedora.redhat.com/download/mirrors.html to the [base] and [updates-released] sections.

Original [base] and [updates-released] sections:

[base]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/

[updates-released]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates
baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch/

New [base] and [updates-released] sections:

[base]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=ftp://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/$releasever/$basearch/os/

[updates-released]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch - Released Updates
baseurl=ftp://ftp.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch/
#baseurl=http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/$releasever/$basearch/

4. Upgrade to Fedora Core 2.
# yum upgrade

Upgrading to Fedora Core 1

Here are the steps I used to upgrade a system to Fedora Core 1:

1. Download and install the Fedora version of yum:
# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/1/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/yum-2.0.4-2.noarch.rpm

2. Download and install the fedora-release package.
# rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/1/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-1-3.i386.rpm

3. Upgrade to Fedora Core 1.
# yum upgrade

Upgrading to Red Hat Linux 9

Here are the steps I used to upgrade a Red Hat Linux 8.0 system to Red Hat Linux 9.

1. Download and install the latest version of yum.
# rpm -Uvh http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/download/2.0/yum-2.0.4-1.noarch.rpm

2. Download and install the redhat-release package from the "new" version of Red Hat Linux.
# rpm -Uvh ftp://ftp.quicknet.nl/pub/Linux/ftp.redhat.com/9/en/os/i386/RedHat/RPMS/redhat-release-9-3.i386.rpm

3. If the gnome-mime-data package is installed (confirm with rpm -q gnome-mime-data), change exactarch=1 to exactarch=0 in /etc/yum.conf.

4. Upgrade to Red Hat Linux 9.
# yum upgrade

5. If applicable, change exactarch=0 back to exactarch=1 in /etc/yum.conf.

The following are some problems I ran into with the upgrade from Red Hat Linux 8.0 to Red Hat Linux 9.

Problem:

Resolving dependencies
.package apt needs librpm-4.1.so (not provided)
package apt needs librpmdb-4.1.so (not provided)
package apt needs librpmio-4.1.so (not provided)
package apt needs libelf.so.0 (not provided)

Solution: # rpm -e apt (I will use yum instead of apt for rpm for package management; I could always manually reinstall apt for rpm after the upgrade)

Problem:

Resolving dependencies
.......identical dependency loop exceeded
package gnome-vfs2 needs gnome-mime-data >= 2.0.0-11 (not provided)

Solution: Set exactarch=0 in /etc/yum.conf. The Red Hat Linux 9 gnome-mime-data package is of a different architecture (i386) than the Red Hat Linux 8.0 package (noarch). You may want to change back to exactarch=1 after the yum upgrade.

Problem: After rebooting into the new kernel, my eth0 network interface was brought up with a static address and then with dhcp. During the upgrade process, the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.dhcp was created. You may want to check /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts for any changes prior to rebooting after the upgrade.

Back to brandonhutchinson.com.