Fedora 7 to 8 update

This article describes the procedure of updating Fedora 7 VE to Fedora 8. This should be trivial with yum, but apparently it is not, especially on a 64-bit architecture like ppc.

Creating/starting an initial VE

Let's create a special VE:

# vzctl create 123 --ostemplate fedora-7-ppc-minimal
# vzctl set 123 --ipadd 10.0.0.123 --save
# vzctl start 123

Note: see Using NAT for VE with private IPs if you don't have public IP for your VE

Upgrading procedure

fedora-release

First, we need to install fedora-release-8 package. Open http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/ppc/os/Packages/ in your browser, find fedora-release-8 package and copy its URL to clipboard.

Now, inside a VE run wget to download the needed package:

[VE]# wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/ppc/os/Packages/fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm
<s>10:25:13</s>  http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/8/Fedora/ppc/os/Packages/fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm
           => `fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm'
Resolving download.fedora.redhat.com… 66.187.224.20, 209.132.176.20, 209.132.176.220
Connecting to download.fedora.redhat.com|66.187.224.20|:80… connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 200 OK
Length: 27,548 (27K) [application/x-rpm]

100%[====================================>] 27,548        57.04K/s             

10:25:14 (56.86 KB/s) — `fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm' saved [27548/27548]

Install the package:

[VE]# rpm -Uhv fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm 
Preparing…                ########################################### [100%]
   1:fedora-release         warning: /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo created as /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo.rpmnew
warning: /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo created as /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo.rpmnew
########################################### [100%]

As we see, a new repo config files were not installed to the usual place (because of the modifications we made to the original versions). Just move the new files over:

[VE]# mv -f /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo       
[VE]# mv -f /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo

Don't forget to remove the rpm file:

[VE]# rm -f fedora-release-8-3.noarch.rpm

Upgrade

keepcache=1

Now we can run yum update. But there are chances it will not work from the first try, so make the following modification in /etc/yum.conf to save some time on future yum runs:

keepcache=1

First try

Run

[VE]# yum update

It will not work for you. The problem is compat-db needs to be installed, and while adding it into transaction, yum adds both .ppc and .ppc64 versions. Then, compat-db.ppc64 package requires a lot of other .ppc64 packages, and eventually shots itself into the foot.

Second try

To work around it, we ask yum to install compat-db.ppc only:

[VE]# yum install compat-db.ppc

After that, we can try yum update again:

[VE]# yum update

Somehow it now works!

Making a template

Now we need to make a template cache out of this just upgraded VE.

First, remove the yum cache:

[VE]# yum clean all

Then stop this VE and remove its IP:

[HN]# vzctl stop 123
[HN]# vzctl set 123 --ipdel all --save

Now we can create a tarball:

[HN]# cd /vz/private/123
[HN]# tar czf /vz/template/cache/fedora-8-ppc-minimal.tar.gz .

Don't forget to destroy this VE:

[HN]# cd
[HN]# vzctl destroy 123

Testing

Our new template needs testing.

First, compare the sizes of the old and the new template caches:

# ls -lh /vz/template/cache/fedora-?-ppc-minimal.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  99M 2007-11-13 18:11 /vz/template/cache/fedora-7-ppc-minimal.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 111M 2007-11-13 19:49 /vz/template/cache/fedora-8-ppc-minimal.tar.gz

The sizes should not differ much.

Try to create and start VE made from your new template:

# vzctl create 222 --ostemplate fedora-8-ppc-minimal
# vzctl set 222 --ipadd 10.0.0.222 --save
# vzctl start 222
# vzctl enter 222

Now execute a few basic commands to check VE is fine. Examples are: ps ax, rpm -qa, etc.

Finally, clean up the testing VE:

# vzctl stop 222
# vzctl destroy 222