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

Sun Dec 9 19:55:13 CET 2012

'Twas brillig, and Thierry Vignaud at 09/12/12 18:48 did gyre and gimble:
+> On 9 December 2012 13:18, Colin Guthrie <mageia at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
+>>>> 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
+>>
+>> Hmm, yes, I guess after doing the upgrade the various /var/run and
+>> /var/lock folders would be nuked. In mga3 they will be created by
+>> tmpfiles but not with a simple reboot on mga2...
+>>
+>> Hmm, I wonder how best to do this... perhaps we could ship updated
+>> packages for each of the packages which absolutely *need* this to do the
+>> download... or perhaps we could just ship some essential config tweaks
+>> in the this mageia-prepare-upgrade file. It shouldn't do any harm to do
+>> the latter and it's a bit easier on the QA folk.
+> 
+> Humm we could just package mageia-prepare-upgrade in mga3 and add
+> it to urpmi priority list.
+> Thus it would also work for people who never apply updates...
+> My 2 cents
+
+Not sure it would help. I mean users have to install it, reboot and then
+install the rest...
+
+Also how does the urpmi priority list work? Does that not require that
+we install urpmi first? If so that likely won't work as there is a
+chicken and egg scenario that prevents the rpm+urpmi from mga3 being
+installed until the fs is updated.
+
+
+Basically, a fully up-to-date mga2 (including rpm package and the
+mageia-prepare-upgrade package) + reboot for preparation is needed for a
+urpmi-based upgrades to work.
+
+Col
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
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