[Novalug] Upgrading from Fedora 13 to Fedora 17/18

James Ewing Cottrell III JECottrell3@Comcast.NET
Sat Jan 12 12:38:42 EST 2013


On 12/29/2012 6:56 PM, greg pryzby wrote:
> I recommend
>     BACKUP
>     INSTALL
>     RESTORE DATA

How Quaint. Everyone says "Backup", but the question is How and Where. I 
suppose it's also Necessary from a CYA standpoint, but it is...

Technically Unnecessary and a Waste Of Time if you Learn To Use The 
Install Program.

Both the RedHat and Debian Installers have a Shell Window on TTY2.

When you come to the Disk Partitioner, do the following:

[1] type CTRL ALT F2 to get to TTY2
[2] mkdir /a; mount /dev/sda1 /a; cd /a; mkdir .0; mv * .??* .0
[3] mv .0/lost+found .; cd /; umount /a; rmdir /a
[4] keep typing ALT LEFT-ARROW until you get back to the Installer
[5] Choose sda1 for / but select DO NOT FORMAT

Proceed with the install normally. Your old files will be in /.0

NOTE: I used sda1 as an example...use the appropriate device
NOTE: you may need twice as much space. If so, trim what is in /a/.0 
before the install. There is almost nothing worth saving in /a/.0/usr if 
you never want to run the old system again.

There was a time when I was debugging my Kickstart Files that I got so 
tired of waiting for mke2fs that I coded this up in a %pre script. The 
first install from Bare Metal I partition and format By Hand and 
essentially rarely do this ever again. Besides, the Install Partitioners 
are losing their ability to specify exact Cylingers, Geometry, and 
Labels, so I would rather do it by hand, of in a %pre script if I must. 
My %pre script uses .0 thru .9 and finds the next name available.

JIM

P.S. For the Record, my partitions are: P1 = /boot, P2 = /resq, P3 = 
/home, P4 = LVM. Sizes vary, but can be 5G, 5G, 20G, REST. /home also 
contains ISOs and /resq also contains KickStart files, so I can do Local 
Installs from the Hard Drive. /resq is a Rescue Linux, whose grub owns 
the MBR. /boot is shared among the other Linuxes I install. Each other 
Linux Root is an LV, as is SWAP.





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