On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 11:50 AM, Lamar Owen <lo...@pari.edu> wrote: > On Monday, November 07, 2011 07:00:08 PM you wrote: >> On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Connie Sieh <cs...@fnal.gov> wrote:
>>> Yes that is our support stance. It is NOT supported by either TUV or SL . >> >> I remember that thread and Connie's response. I'm sorry that I >> suggested in this thread that it was OK; I was confusing RHEL/SL with >> Fedora, where it is OK and one of the Anaconda pre-release QA tests. > > Not supported != doesn't work. Which means, if you get it to work, that's > great, > but if it fails to work, you get to keep the pieces, and you won't be > 'entitled' to > any sympathy or help. I agree - and I don't think that I said that it wouldn't work. > There has been an 'upgradeany' command line option in CentOS at least for > several cycles, but it is also not supported. It might work, but it likely > will leave your system in a 'self-supported' state. Meaning, again, that > when it breaks you won't get any sympathy, and you'll likely get the > 'unsympathy' which seems to be typical for techie lists.... sorry, but facts > are facts, and whether it's right and fair or not, it just *is* the case. I'd forgotten about "upgradeany" (probably because I've never used it). AFAIU, it's useful if the installer cannot recognize your installation as upgradable because of a modified/broken "/etc/*-release". So it's just a special case of "upgrade". > Likewise, preupgrade tends to work fairly well for Fedora; but when it works > it typically doesn't work for an upgrade increment of more than two Fedora > versions. The Fedora version skew between EL5, based somewhat on FC6, and > EL6, based somewhat on a melange of F12, F13, and other things, is 6 full > Fedora versions. Even if preupgrade were available for FC6, it likely would > not upgrade to F12 even in one step. It's not likely to be ever be > *supported* on EL of any version, even if it does become available. I was hoping for a "preupgrade" option for an SL6-to-SL7 upgrade not an SL5-to-SL6 one because "preupgrade" appeared in F10 or F11 and SL6's based on F12/F13. You're probably right that "preupgrade" might not be able to handle as large a jump as SL6 to SL7. > This is where the one of the major differences between the RPM packaging and > the DEB packaging shows itself. Debian (and Debian-derivatives) take > advantage of the possibility of interactive response in a DEB to deal with > real upgrade issues; RPMs are not supposed to do any interaction with the > user in any of the package's scriptlets. The DEB scripts have wide latitude > in what they can do, and have several powerful tools available for use in > the script. It does make complete unattended upgrading somewhat difficult, > as it prompts the user for lots and lots of things and seemingly random > times; IOW, it's not a 'start it and let it run overnight' thing without > effort. You can add "%pre" and/or "%post" scripts requiring user-interaction to an SRPM's spec file and package/repackage an RPM but it's very much frowned upon. You won't get a "nice" debconf dialog but you can _PROBABLY_ so the same thing. (I've forgotten how to do so but you can set up apt to answer debconf dialogs automatically.) > I've attempted preupgrade upgrades, and have not had one go 100% > successfully yet. Nor, for that matter, have I ever had a DVD or CD upgrade > of any Fedora version go 100% successfully, either. I've had problems with various types of upgrades whether using Linux or Windows/OS X. My latest misadventure was upgrading my iPad from iOS 4 to iOS 5... But, thankfully, the majority of the upgrades that I've attempted have been successful. I prefer clean installs though!