[Mageia-dev] ANN: Upgrading from Mageia 2 via urpmi

Sat Dec 8 23:51:15 CET 2012

On Sunday, November 18, 2012 09:37:43 AM Colin Guthrie wrote:
+> Hi,
+> 
+> As many of you know, upgrading from Mageia 2 is somewhat tricky due to
+> the usr move.
+> 
+> With Alpha3 comes the ability for the installer to upgrade the
+> filesystem layout, but many of you (myself included) prefer upgrading
+> via urpmi rather than the installer.
+> 
+> While this is possible with some manual commands, it's not as trivial a
+> task as it should be - until now!!
+> 
+> So I've just pushed the package mageia-prepare-upgrade to mga2
+> core/updates_testing.
+> 
+> This package, when installed will add a new menu option to your
+> bootloader. Simply install this package, reboot, select the "Mageia 3
+> Upgrade Preparation" entry boot, wait while your FS is converted and
+> then perform a urpmi upgrade as you would normally.
+> 
+> I've not specifically tested the upgrade part, only the installation and
+> creation of the initrd and bootloader entries in grub. I've also not
+> done this on an mga2 machine yet but will do soon enough.
+> 
+> I just wanted to get this package "out there" for anyone wanting to
+> update their mga2 machines to mga3 a3 but not wanting to use the installer.
+> 
+> At present there are a few limitations:
+> 
+> 1. It requires kernel 3.3.8-2.mga2 to be installed (any flavour should
+> work). A specific kernel version is not really 100% necessary but it
+> does mean I can add hard requires to the package. This is only desirable
+> to prevent the situation where users install this upgrade package but do
+> not run it and later remove the kernel used to generate the initrd for
+> the bootloader menu item, thus breaking it. Any smarter ideas on how to
+> manage this welcome.
+> 
+> 2. If you have /usr in a separate partition and have it mounted ro in
+> your fstab, you will have to manually change the fstab to rw for the
+> upgrade boot.
+> 
+> 
+> Happy testing. Let me know if it kills any kittens. Please keep a backup
+> etc. etc.
+> 
+> Col
+Thanks Colin.
+The conversion works. But then the problem shows, we have no network.
+doing a urpmi --download-all --auto-update only downloads the fist 120+ rpms (the ones needed before 
+restart-urpmi
+
+What is needed is to add some directories and then the network will start
+/var/run/netreport
+/var/lock/subsystem/network
+
+I will check after the upgrade if they can be deleted
+
+-- 
+Best regards
+Thomas Spuhler
+