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

Sun Nov 18 23:13:31 CET 2012

'Twas brillig, and Thierry Vignaud at 18/11/12 16:40 did gyre and gimble:
+> On 18 November 2012 17:37, Colin Guthrie <mageia at colin.guthr.ie> wrote:
+> 
+>> 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.
+> 
+> Cannot you just made dracut/mkinitrd always include it and just
+> rebuild initrds so
+> that any kernel with work
+
+Well yes, this package installs a dracut config snippet that does always
+include the module. The rebuilding of the initrd is just that - a
+rebuild under the same name as is always used for the normal kernel -
+just with the extra convertfs module added.
+
+However, it requires special kernel command line to trigger the change
+and thus the bootloader entry adds the needed params for you.
+
+I'm not sure it would be a good idea to make any boot silently do the
+conversion.
+
+>> 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.
+> 
+> Cannot you just automatically remount / rw?
+
+Yup it would of course be possible, however I'm not sure it's a good
+idea. I mean users who have chosen to have both a separate /usr and to
+mount it ro by default are undoubtebly in the minority. They likely do
+so for very specific reasons. To this end asking them to acknowledge the
+change very specifically seems to me like the prudent option, rather
+than silently remounting rw for them.
+
+However, if your first point is conceded, you could argue that the user
+is very specifically requesting a rw setup anyway and that, to me, is
+likely confirmation enough.
+
+So I would likely propose keeping the special menu item, but also
+changing the convertfs script such that it can be used with a ro /usr
+silently without any manual intervention.
+
+
+Col
+
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
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+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
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+