Linux tip, Fedora tip / howto: upgrading from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora 8 |
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Linux tip, Fedora tip / howto: upgrading from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora 8 |
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upgrading from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora 8 First and foremost, if you have the option of saving all your data (and settings, don't forget the .* directories in your home directory, config files in /etc, and so on!), and then installing Fedora 8 from scratch, go for it. After having done an actual upgrade, I realize it was pure insanity: at just about every step there were obstructions accompanied by obscure error messages. On the other hand, it is testament to the quality of the OS that by beating it long and hard enough you can get it to run again (and be stable!). So here goes.. 1. Disk partitions have to be labeled However, for Fedora 8 to be happy, all partitions have to be labeled, so first you label it: This worked for all my Linux partitions (I left 2 Windows partitions alone), except for the swap partition: tune2fs did not allow me to label it. Fortunately it already had a label, recoverable using blkid: The line in /etc/fstab becomes: LABEL=SWAP-hda8 swap swap defaults 0 0 A side note: whereas under Fedora Core 4 harddisk partitions were referenced by /dev/hda (and hdb etc.), under Fedora 8 this has become /dev/sda etc. Apparently this has been a very common problem. If you want to read about lots of other people encountering it: a bugzilla entry about it. Suggested solutions are at this page. After trying the update image (and failing), I decided to download a "respin" which was supposed to have the fix already in it. First install jigdo: Pick the .iso file(s) you would like, and wait a couple of hours (depending on your bandwidth) for all the stuff to download.. Then burn the .iso file to a DVD (or set of CDs, if that was what you downloaded). In my case, I got the 20071218 respin, which still did not want to install :-( First I copied all RPMs from /cdrom/Packages (my DVD drive mounts at /cdrom) to a directory /data/packages (you can put them anywhere where you have at least 3.1 GB available). The ones I wasn't interested in I moved to a directory /data/packages/skip (for example, ant, jakarta, mono, this may be different in your case of course). Note: also move the kernel-* RPMs to the skip directory (!). Next, boot from the installation DVD, and select "linux rescue" as the option. To remove all packages specific to Fedora Core 4: rpm --root=/mnt/sysimage -qa | sort > /tmp/rpms.txt Check the resulting file /tmp/rpms.txt for package duplicates, and remove the older versions, and then (!) reinstall the newer version (using rpm --root=/mnt/sysimage -Uvh --force). There may be quite a few of them (I had to do this for about 60 packages, for example). One example, both glibc-2.5.90-8, and glibc-2.7-2 were installed on my system. To fix this: rpm -e --nodeps --root=/mnt/sysimage glibc-2.5.90-8 rpm -Uvh --force --root=/mnt/sysimage glibc-2.7-2 (you may get the error version 'GLIBC_2.7' not found in this case otherwise for many libraries who need it, for example /lib/libc.so.6) Now boot from the installation DVD and select the text mode install. If all went well in the previous steps, only a few packages should be installed (including the kernel packages), and your PC should boot into Fedora 8... All is not done yet, however: I still ran into loads of error messages that each required a lot of digging on the web to fix :-( Possibly one fix is to establish a policy somewhere somehow. Another fix is to disable SELinux: boot into linux rescue mode using the installation DVD, and edit /mnt/sysimage/etc/selinux/config: change the line An alternative boot method is to press any key once you get the Grub boot screen, then press 'e' to edit boot options, and selinux=0 to the end of the line, then press 'b' to boot. Obviously, after logging in you need to edit /etc/selinux/config, as described above. First, update the kernel and the X server: From the nVidia Linux drivers page, get the latest driver package. For my "legacy" card this was the file NVIDIA-Linux-x86-96.43.05-pkg1.run. You may need to run it as follows: These drivers worked fine (together with kernel 2.6.23.15-137 and xorg version 1.3.0.0-40). 9. Fatal server error: could not open default font 'fixed'This usually meant that your font server (xfs) wasn't running. Nowadays xfs is no longer needed, all you need to do is add some font paths to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf:A related error message: emacs complaining no fonts found: this probably means xfs has crashed. Just disable it, and use the path specifications as described above. A helpful reader pointed out that here you can read about the "official" way for granting permissions to users.
Now, when you attach your Firewire drive, the modules ieee1394, ohci1394, and sbp2 should be automatically loaded (use lsmod to check). Check dmesg | tail to see if your drive is recognized.
In this case, tuxracer runs, produces no audio, only the message: A fix: (I don't know yet why the game cannot use Alsa, for example, but at least this fix works..)
To be continued ... |
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