How to Upgrade
SLF 4.x to the latest 4.x
via yum

Updated September 27, 2006

All steps must be done as root

Scientific Linux Fermi was designed so that an administrator can easily upgrade their computer between minor releases.
It is not required that administrators upgrade their release, because the security errata will be updated for all releases. But there are often features and/or packages included in later releases that were not available with the earlier releases.
Below is the steps, to change to the latest release.
These instructions are for updating between minor releases, such as from 4.1 to 4.2. Changes between major releases, such as LTS 3.0.2 to 4.1, or 7.3.1 to LTS 3.0.x may have more problems and are not discussed here.

Special Steps
Some steps will have one or more of the following markings.
Optional : This step may be skipped if wanted.
IMPORTANT : This step is very important.

For the impatient

  1. rpm -Uvh ftp://linux.fnal.gov/linux/lts4x/i386/sites/Fermi/misc/RPMS/yum-conf-latest.SLF.noarch.rpm
  2. yum clean all
  3. yum update yum
  4. yum update

For the more cautious

  1. Make sure you have done your backup's.
    I haven't heard of anyone needing them, but don't you be the first.
  2. IMPORTANT Make sure you have enough disk space. In particular, make sure you have enough space in /var/cache, which is where yum downloads the rpm's to.
  3. Optional yum update
    This will get your system up to date with the latest packages. It will also make the last step smaller. If you want, you really can skip this step.
  4. rpm -Uvh ftp://linux.fnal.gov/linux/lts4x/i386/sites/Fermi/misc/RPMS/yum-conf-latest.SLF.noarch.rpm
    This will install the latest yum.conf for your system. If you customized your yum.cron, or your yum.cron.excludes files, these will not be touched. So you may want to redo them.
  5. yum clean all
    This cleans up all the yum cache. It's possible yum might remember everything from the old yum configuration. It also cleans up your disk space.
  6. yum update yum
    You should always get latest yum.
  7. yum update
    This is the big part, where everything get's changed.
  8. IMPORTANT Check your grub and/or lilo settings. Although yum usually get's things right when it updates kernels, it is always a good idea to give the grub and/or lilo config files a check.
  9. yum clean all
    This cleans up all the rpm's that you just downloaded, clearning up your disk space.
  10. /bin/reboot
    Reboot into your new kernel and Scientific Linux Fermi release