Re: [WBEL-users] Upgrading from Whitebox to RHEL

Mike B. spake the following on 4/27/2007 6:13 PM:
> At 4/27/2007 01:54 PM, Scott Silva wrote:
> 
>> Most configuration files are in the /etc directory.  If you install
>> something
>> that stores its config files somewhere else, make a symlink into /etc
>> for it
>> so you can just tar the /etc directory occasionally.
> 
> That's the sort of idea that experienced folks know, but us newbies
> don't always think of...even if we know about symlinks.  Thanks!
> 
> A lot of stuff seems to keep config and other customized files in /var
> (DNS, WWW, etc.).  Is there any other location that's common for storing
> such things?
> 
>>  If you put your /home
>> directory on a separate filesystem, it can be left untouched during
>> the new OS
>> install.
> 
> That concept carried over from my decades of VAX/VMS and OpenVMS
> experience...so that's how I set up my server way back when.
> 
>> I have done some in place upgrades, but I will usually make a list of
>> all the
>> installed rpms with rpm -qa |sort >rpmlist.txt before and after the
>> upgrade,
>> and compare the list with a log from a fresh install in a vmware vm.
>> That way
>> I can look for orphaned rpms.
> 
> What about things that got installed without RPMs?  Things built
> locally, from source that wasn't RPM'd or whatever?  Is there a simple
> way to find it all, or do you just have to be organized from day one and
> keep a database (even if it's just a flat text file)?
> 
> I think part of my problem is that when I first set up my RH 5.2 system
> I was brand new to linux and had almost zero unix experience.  I was so
> overwhelmed just getting things to work at all that I had no spare
> cycles left over for worrying about future maintenance or upgrades.  RH
> made upgrading easy...just make a backup for safety (copy to another HD
> and upgrade the copy) and do the upgrade.  That's how I got along up to
> 7.2 where I am now.  About the time I was going to upgrade again RH
> changed direction and I've been frozen in time ever since except for
> necessary individual upgrades, like Sendmail.  It's time to start over,
> but I don't want to lose too much of what I had set up already...though
> if that happens, so be it, but I'd prefer to do better on the *next* big
> change at least.
> 
> Thanks for the ideas!
> 
> -- Mike B.
You are saying that this system has been upgraded from 5.2 all the way to 7.2?
Is the hardware even capable of moving to a new distro?
I would definitely back it up somewhere and do a fresh install. So much has
changed since then, and many of your old configuration files will need some
editing to work properly.

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