fedora hangs when upgrading from 8 -> 9
 

I've tried three times now, u/g from FC8 to FC9

A variety of methods,
one described here: fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq
and other on blogs.

Essentially, the process is basically:

1.Download the fedora-release-*.noarch packages from a FC repo and install it.
2.This tells YUM which repos to go to for the <$release> and <$basearch>
3.Clean all caches in local repo database and do yum upgrade

after about 2 hours the job is finished with no errors.

but when I reboot, I get past bootup, into usplash, that goes okay upto the end and just before GDM appears, then the system just hangs. only way out is a warm reset.

anyone seen similar probs?

upgrading is listed as EXPERIMENTAL it only works about 50% of the time
do a fresh install

yes thank you for the experimental status.

a fresh install means loosing installed programs, and all config under /etc plus everything under /opt/etc /usr/local/etc and so on.

More than likely those programs will have to be replaced with newer ones anyway(or recompiled).

I have to say I find that statement rather generic and sweeping. Can you please elaborate on your rationale for such a statement?

Almost all the libs will be different versions when you update from one version to another. Most programs depend on system libs in order to run. As these libs are constantly evolving they also tend to have minor difference in how they are used. For instance samba for F8 will probably not function correctly on F9, however there is an updated version of samba available (through yum) for F9.

ah, I see. so the dependency on core libs is the issue. that is indeed a very good point thus I retract my previous statement

and it is much less hassle updating from a repo than rebuilding+relinking against new libs.

so basically I should just backup system config (/etc /opt/etc /usr/local/etc and so on) then fresh install.

cheers