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

Sun Nov 18 17:37:43 CET 2012

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
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
+  PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/
+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+