Re: RH 7.3 -> 8.0 Upgrade Questions

[Steven Pritchard <steve@silug.org>]

On Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 02:44:10PM -0600, KoReE wrote:
> Basically my question is this.  I'm very happy with me 7.3 installation.
> I don't want to screw it up :D  But, I'd like to use OpenOffice, and the
> RH RPMs for OpenOffice have hella dependencies.

You'll probably be happiest either a) just installing OpenOffice from
the FTP site, or b) using apt to install OpenOffice and all of its
dependencies, while carefully avoiding upgrading rpm.

In all honesty, unless you have some other compelling reason to run
Red Hat 8.0 ("I want to" is a valid reason), I'd probably just stick
with the binaries on the FTP site.

  http://ftp.silug.org/pub/openoffice.org/stable/1.0.1/OOo_1.0.1_LinuxIntel_install.tar.gz

Just be sure to run the install program with "/net" or "-net"
(apparently both work), and install to a public directory (like
/opt/OpenOffice.org-1.0.1).  The first time you start it up as a
regular user, it will run the setup again, and you can do a
"workstation" installation, which basically just copies some stuff
over to your home directory.

> In my experience, installing those dependencies usually breaks
> something else, so I have to upgrade that, then that breaks something
> else, etc, etc.

Doing the partial upgrade with apt seems to be fairly safe.  At the
moment, my main box is all Red Hat 8.0 with the exception of rpm
(which is somewhat broken in Red Hat 8.0) and anything that depends on
the newer version of rpm (which is remarkably few things).

> The last time I attempted a RH upgrade, it hosed my system. So, I'm a
> bit skeptical.

I still can't begin to imagine what went wrong.  I have upgraded
literally hundreds of Red Hat systems over the last several years
without *any* major problems.  I've even upgraded a few
non-Red-Hat-but-still-rpm-based systems (Mandrake, Caldera, SuSE) to
Red Hat with remarkably few problems.  With each new release, the
upgrade process seems to get even smoother.

> Anyone tried this?  Are there any pitfalls I should watch for?

The big issue with Red Hat 8.0 is rpm...  It has some really annoying
locking bugs that will cause it to hang periodically.  Until there are
updates for it, I really don't recommend upgrading existing systems
unless there is some compelling reason.

On the other hand, there is a compelling reason to go with Red Hat 8.0
for new installs...  LVM.  I should probably whip up a quick tutorial
on that.

Steve
-- 
steve@silug.org           | Southern Illinois Linux Users Group
(618)398-7360             | See web site for meeting details.
Steven Pritchard          | http://www.silug.org/

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