cfis : The Agony of Upgrading Fedora

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by ToddY

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:04:24 -0700

Heh, thansk for sharing.

Yep, TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is why I gave up on Linux years ago. I just didn’t want to work that damn hard on it.

And yes, I’m sure its better now than it was (thank god for google to find answers) but I’m also older and so am willing to put even less effort into it. :)

I’m sure there are a ton of people/organizations who Linux is the perfect answer for their personality/needs/etc, but just reading your post reaffirmed why it isn’t for me anymore.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Dylan

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:09:48 -0700

Wow– you could probably turn this into some kind of screen play for a tech version of Indiana Jones…

As with anything new- learning takes time, patience, and even sometimes Reading-TFM…

I have been a Debian user for nearly 7 years now, and their package management system alone is worth it. Seriously, who in their right mind would want to install from scratch with each new version? That route sounds like a recipe for the kind of tragedy that plays out in your rant above.

Getting started in linux can be hard, but there are a couple of tips which can help.

join a local user group, or at least their mailing list- this continues to save me countless hours when working with something new from time to time…
get a text-based install of debian or ubuntu. these are modern, well-supported distributions with a SANE package management system.
spend some time looking at linux books at your local book store- maybe even buy one. many of the tips will save time and effort.

Learning while doing is difficult- so make sure you put in some of the learning before attempting the doing.

Good luck –

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by James

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:12:30 -0700

Ubuntu inherits Debian’s efforts in making upgrades as easy as breathing. The saying about the old debian install program was that it didn’t matter it was horrible, since you only install Debian once, and upgrade forever after. My desktop’s Debian install from 2000 is still going strong after two major system upgrades (P3 to Athlon 2500+ to Core2Duo).

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Charlie

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:14:49 -0700

Hey Dylan and James,

I’ve definitely considered moving over to Ubuntu. What’s stopped me is a) once Fedora is actually installed it works pretty well for me and b) it seemed like it would be more painful to switch than upgrade. Of course, this weekend’s experience makes that a bit laughable.

And good tips Dylan - I’m a big fan of Safari which has lots of good Linux books online.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Charlie

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:16:44 -0700

ToddY - So what did you end up with?

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Robert

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:23:30 -0700

Charlie,

I know the Linux upgrade horrors - I tried to get my WLAN to work under Debian once (still doesn’t work but I’m satisfied with using wires now).

Which leads me to the question: why didn’t you use the Danish boot disk?

Robert.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Allan Doyle

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 04:20:00 -0700

It’s not just Linux. I’ve experienced similar issues with Plone and MacPorts (and probably others that I’ve suppressed the memory of). I think upgrades/updates are hard to make easy and to make work in all the configurations that people set up on their own systems. The funny thing is, I always wind up living on the edge by tweaking the dickens out of whatever I use. I should be amazed and thankful that I don’t have these kind of problems every time I do any upgrade.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by ToddY

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:08:26 -0700

Mac OS X for personal use, and Windows happens to be my current required dev platform for work.

Something of an old article, but one that I found interesting at the time.

http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Charlie

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:38:33 -0700

Hey Robert,

Memories of the Danish boot disk kept floating through my mind. I can’t remember though how we got to that state - was I trying to setup a dual boot system or something?

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Charlie

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:41:05 -0700

Hi Allan,

I agree - upgrades are hard - and system upgrades are harder. But like you, I try to forget my horror stories as soon as possible. But I figured I’d write one down for once!

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Brian B.

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:15:05 -0700

It’s not that Fedora sucks; it’s that you admittedly have (what is to you) a “production” environment that you treat as if it is a development environment. Here’s what I’ve learned over time:

Keep your application data on partitions that are separate from your OS partition. If possible, keep the OS on a separate disk altogether. Drives fail, installations get borked. Eggs in one basket, etc.
Generate a ks.cfg that maps out exactly what you want to do prior to upgrading. At times Anaconda can suck but you can bypass most of the ugliness by using kickstart. You can specify drive layout, whether to wipe the partitions, etc. It’s the best aspect of Red Hat’s product that not enough people use. Every Fedora or RHEL install generates a working ks.cfg in root’s home dir. Use it as a jumping off point.
Download a copy of VMware server and test out said ks.cfg prior to upgrading. It’s free. Set up a VM on your desktop and play around with it until you’re comfortable. That way the computer you destroy will only be a virtual one.
Download the Fedora tree to one of the partitions you won’t be wiping and set your ks.cfg to install from that partition. Keep it on a local server and always be suspect of mirrors that may be a day or two behind. Okay so this one is optional :-)

You could easily have this problem with other Linux derivatives; don’t let people tell you different … even in Ubuntu.Upgrading from 6.06 to 6.10 broke a lot of working configurations. You just have to do the requisite planning and testing if your data is important to you.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Charlie

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:01:35 -0700

Hey Brian,

I treat it even worse than a development environment - its more like a teaching environment. So no doubt I’m partially at fault here.

And thanks for the great info about ks.cfg, I’d never heard of it before. I’ll check it out.

And last, I stick with Fedora because I do like it, and at this point, am fairly familiar with it.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Matt

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 00:51:08 -0700

It sounds like you’re pretty set on Fedora, but I hope maybe I can nudge you in another direction. My nudging is not because I think Fedora’s awful, but because my single greatest pearl of wisdom after using linux as my primary OS over the last 10 years is this: the single greatest factor in determining your enjoyment of linux is the package management system.

If you haven’t tried an RPM based system (Redhat/Fedora/Suse/etc), an APT based system (Debian/Ubuntu/etc), and a Portage based system (Gentoo) then there’s a reasonable likelihood you could be happier somewhere else. Different people find different systems intuitive.

It sounds to me like you might really enjoy the Gentoo way of looking at things. There isn’t any upgrading from version to version. Portage is a rolling upgrade system that treats updating as a diff between your system at the newest stuff. This can be a blessing and a curse, but you sure learn a lot.

Don’t underestimate the value of shopping around. I used Redhat for years before I shopped around and it turned out to be one of my least favorite.

All that aside, I’m glad you made it. That reboot-google sequence drives me nuts.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Charlie

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 15:35:08 -0700

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the recommendation. Shopping around strikes me as good advice. I’d like to get a bit of experience in the Gentoo and Debian world. One of the MapBuzz developers (Andres) is a big fan of Gentoo, and uses it as his main development machine.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Andre P.

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 10:33:54 -0700

Upgrades of the latest versions of Ubuntu have gone very smoothly for me.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by Tom

Thu, 13 Mar 2008 10:35:24 -0600

I guess I should consider myself lucky that the .isos of Fedora 8 are (apparently) corrupt (I tried from work and home on different machines, different OSs, burning software, different brands of blank disks, different mirrors). I’d gotten fed up with Ubuntu because of it’s crappy sound card support and was considering switching. Uh, maybe not.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by steve@waweru.net

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:51:06 -0600

They change Fedora so radically with each version I feel like ditching Linux. Change is good but has to make sense.

Comment on The Agony of Upgrading Fedora by steve@waweru.net

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:51:26 -0600

They change Fedora so radically with each version I feel like ditching Linux. Change is good but has to make sense.