How to Upgrade
Fermi Linux 9.0.1 to the latest Scientific Linux Fermi LTS 3.0.x
via yum

UPdated October 6, 2005

Basic Steps

1. Back everything up somehow.
2. Make sure you have LOTS of room for /var/cache - 400Meg to 1000Meg should do.
3. yum update yum
4. If you have a graphical desktop installed
   1. yum install firstboot
   2. echo "RUN_FIRSTBOOT=NO" > /etc/sysconfig/firstboot
5. Only if galeon is installed:yum remove galeon
6. Only if ddskk-xemacs is installed:yum remove ddskk-xemacs
7. Only if PyQt is installed:yum remove PyQt\*
8. Update your yum.conf file by doing
   rpm -Uvh ftp://linux.fnal.gov/linux/lts30x/i386/sites/Fermi/misc/RPMS/yum-conf-30x.LTS.noarch.rpm
9. Optional: yum -d0 list nedit
10. yum upgrade (this will take a while)
    It is possible that this command will not work because of unresolved dependancies. So far the ones I have seen are ddskk-xemacs. If this happens you have a couple choices.
    • Remove the offending rpm's, then try it again.
      yum remove (offending rpms)
      yum upgrade
    • Do a fresh install.
11. Double check /etc/lilo.conf and/or grub.conf. Re-run lilo if you are using it.
    /sbin/lilo
12. yum clean all
13. Optional: Clean up your old 901 yum cache
    rm -rf /var/cache/yum/90*
14. /sbin/reboot
15. yum install (offending rpms that you still want)
16. Optional: yum list extras
    These are the rpm's that are not part of LTS. This means that they will not automatically get security updates. If you do not need these packages, it is a very good idea to remove them so you don't end up with a security supprise later on down the road. You should use yum to remove the packages, incase there is some interdependancies.
    Some of the common packages that you will find, that can safely be removed are comps, lrzsz, ncftp, reiserfs-utils, and statserial
    yum remove comps lrzsz ncftp reiserfs-utils statserial

Extra Info on the various steps

1. backups are always a good idea.
2. Yum has to download all the rpm's, before it installs them. You need space for that.
3. It's always good to have the latest yum
4. Firstboot is only for graphical desktops. If you have a server that doesn't have any graphical stuff on it, then it won't ever get run, so you don't have to worry about it.
   1. Firstboot was not installed on Fermi Linux 9.0.1. But there are many packages in Fermi Linux LTS 3.0.1 that require it. Adding it now just clears up alot of dependancies that might cause a failure in the important step.
   2. You don't really have to have firstboot run. This turns it off.
5. Galeon is not a package in LTS. So if you have galeon installed, you need to have the version from 90rolling, which corresponds to mozilla 1.5, which is the mozilla that LTS has. If you don't use galeon, you can always just remove it.
6. You can either just changed all the 901's to say lts301, or you can do replace it with this
   yum.conf.LTS301 file.
7. Run 'yum -d0 list nedit' to get all the lts301 yum headers. You don't HAVE to do this, but it makes the yum upgrade command faster, so you don't have to wait for both the header downloads AND all the upgrading it's going to do.
8. We have found that rpm think that the yum-conf from LTS 3.0.1 is a lower revision of yum-conf from 9.0.1. So in this step we are removing the 9.0.1 yum-conf, putting back the /etc/yum.conf that
9. This is the main command that does the upgrade, it will take a while. Anywhere from half an hour on fast machines, to a couple hours on slow machines.
   The difference between an update and an upgrade, is that an update replaces an old package, with the new package of the same name.  An upgrade will look through the available packages, and if there are any packages that seem like they have changed names, or obsolete a package, it will replace the old package, with the package of the new name.  You don't always want that because sometimes there are two packages that provide the same service or programs.  An example of this is ssh and openssh.
10. If you don't know if you are using lilo or grub, run the following command.
    grubby --bootloader-probe
    You should check the appropriate file ( /etc/lilo.conf if you are using lilo, or /boot/grub/grub.conf if you are using grub), and make sure it has an LTS kernel section. The LTS kernel will be a 2.4.21-(number).EL kernel. The Fermi Linux 9.0.1 kernels did NOT have an EL in the name.
    It is a good idea to rerun lilo ' /sbin/lilo ' if you are using lilo. This will double check to make sure make sure you're going to be able to boot again.
    This how-to isn't supposed to be a lilo or grub tutorial. If you are having problems, please contact your local admin that will know how to configure them.
11. The upgrade will have downloaded alot of packages. We should clean these up to get back out disk space.
12. Although the 901 yum cache area probrubly doesn't have too many packages, it is and area we won't be using anymore, so it is a good practice to clean it up.
13. We need to reboot to start using the latest kernel.
    It is also likely that you just changed libraries on a running program. This can have unexpected results. So while you may find that the machine runs well without rebooting for a while, you are quite likely to running into these strange problems. In the end, you really will need to reboot the machine, either sooner or later.
14. You now have yum, so you can install whatever packages you wish Especially those that you uninstalled in previous steps.
    yum install (rpm's that you want)

Problems You Might Encounter

• Running out of space for /var/cache will also cause problems.
  There isn't much for me to tell you other than get /var/cache more space. You will probrubly notice this if you get a error like

  Error: MD5 Signature check failed for /var/cache/yum/901server/packages/gnumeric-1.0.5-3.i386.rpm
  You may want to run yum clean or remove the file: /var/cache/yum/901server/packages/gnumeric-1.0.5-3.i386.rpm
  Exiting.

  Or it might tell you there isn't enough room before it starts the installs.
  What can I say but to get more room for /var/cache, and also probrubly /
• The biggest problem people will encounter is multiple rpm's of the same type installed.
  This occurs when someone does an install of an rpm that is already installed, instead of an upgrade. Sometime's rpm will complain when you do this, and sometimes it will just happily install the one rpm on top of the other.
  Please note this does NOT apply to kernels. You can have as many kernel rpm's installed as you desire, and yum will not care.
  What to do
  1. Make sure you have access to the rpm, if you still want it. The easiest way would be to use yum to get access to it.
     • ncftpls ftp://linux.fnal.gov/linux/901/i386/RedHat/RPMS/ | grep
     An example would be
     • ncftpls ftp://linux.fnal.gov/linux/901/i386/RedHat/RPMS/ | grep pine
     or
     • yum list
       But this can often give a false negative if you have the latest version of the product. But if yum say's that it's available, then it is available.
     If that rpm is NOT available via yum, then figure out where you have the version that you really want. Keep this version handy for the last step.
  2. Remove all the rpm's.
     We are going to use pine as an example. Please replace appropriatly.
     First we see that pine has multiple instances of being installed.
     1. rpm -q pine
        pine-4.44-7.73.0
        pine-4.44-19.90.0
        pine-4.44-1.71.0
     Then we remove all instances of it
     2. rpm -e --allmatches pine
  3. Re-install just the new rpm, or the one you want.
     Note:This would be better if done after you have done the yum upgrade to 7.3.1. Otherwise yum is going to try to drag in alot of the newer rpm's. This isn't bad in itself, but you might as well do it all in one big swoop, then install these extra one's individually.
     • yum install pine
• There are some packages that cause problems because they have been renamed, removed, or some other reason. Here is a list of not only what they are, but an explanation on why you should or should not be worried about them.
  • (no rpms for here yet)
    This part will explain the rpm and whether removing it permanatly is good or not.