Fedora 17 to Fedora 19 Upgrade

Long story short: My computer at work was running Fedora 17. Wow-wow-wow, dude, you may say, seventeen? Really? Yep. It worked for my previous collegue and worked for me for a while too without any major issues. But do you know what time is it? Upgrade time!

While I found Fedora pretty good distribution (I work with CentOS systems mostly so rpm-based distribution on local computer is… hm… yammy, I’d say) Fedora 17 is old and a bit lame so it was really a pain to find and install some soft for it. The day came and I’ve overpowered my sysadmin “don’t touch anything if it just works” habit and start an upgrade.

Well, guys, I know Fedora 20 is coming soon, but I’m not so brave to install pre-release version and to hop over release. My goal was to obtain stable system, so I decided to perform Fedora 17 => Fedora 18 => Fedora 19 upgrades.

C’mon, let’s go! Fedora 17 => Fedora 18

I won’t repeat instructions in details except one: please be sure you have backup for any tiny piece of information you don’t want to loose.

I was impressed by the number of i686 packages installed. Most of them were Skype-related, so I removed Skype prior to an upgrade.

During the 17 => 18 upgrade yum downloaded ~1.5 Gb of updates. Pretty serious change!

If you’re curious you can get list of i686 packages using the following command:

{% codeblock %} $ sudo rpm -qa | grep i686 {% endcodeblock %}

if upgrate breaks rpm database and rpm -qa doesn’t work you can just rebuild database:

{% codeblock %} $ sudo rpm –rebuilddb {% endcodeblock %}

I’m using GDM display manager, guys say upgrade may break autostart for this service. You may check service status using the following command:

$ sudo systemctl status gdm.service

If service enabled it will be started upon the next reboot.

Once upgrade to Fedora 18 was finished I’ve installed boot loader:

$ sudo grub2-install /dev/sda

rebooted and proceed to 19. I’ve got few unpleasant moments when system complained some of fonts are missing prior to reboot and when after reboot screen freezed for a moment after login. But once I’ve logged all bells and whistlers seemed to be working properly. Even sound worked!

18 to 19

Please be sure you don’t block screen during this upgrade because active user sessions may break (check details) and you won’t be able to re-login.

During 18 => 19 upgrade yum downloaded about 1.4 Gbs of updates.

Checked and merged configs using rpmconf:

$ sudo yum install rpmconf
$ sudo rpmconf -a

you may also check if there are still any rpmnew or rpmsave files and decide if you need them:

find /etc /var -name '*?.rpm?*'

Reinstalled grub loader one more time and rebooted.

I didn’t notice any issues related to the upgrade itself so far, but I prefer to swith layouts using CapsLock key and new default Gnome configuration tool seems to miss needed feature. Anyway I can use gnome-tweak-tool to configure Gnome as I need.