HOW TO: Upgrade from FC2 to CentOS 5.1 (2ways)
 

I can NOT be responsible if this breaks anything for you. It worked for me. And I have tested it and verified it several times.


Please back up your data before attempting this.
Please DO test this to see if it works as I have described below.


First way.

On the FC2 box change the /etc/fedora-release file to say:
CentOS release 5 (Final)

(save file, duh!)

Boot the FC2 box with the CDROM or DVD of Centos 5.1

At the boot menu choose:
linux upgradeany

follow directions.


reboot.

BAM!

It's just that easy.


2nd way:
Upgrade with a PXE server

On the FC2 box change the fedora-release file to
CentOS release 5 (Final)

(save file, duh!)

make a section in your "/tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/default" file like this:

label fc2upgrade
kernel centos51_i386/vmlinuz
append ks=http://ip/location/to/ks.upgrade text initrd=centos51_i386/initrd.img ramdisk_size=8192


create your kickstart file on your http server:
ks.upgrade:
____________________________

upgrade
url --url http://ip/location/to/CentOS/core/i386
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
skipx
bootloader --location=mbr --append="selinux=0"
text

_______________________________


modify kickstart file as needed.
I chose to disable selinux on my original FC2 install so you should disable it in the upgrade.



You might have to play around with it, but this worked for me. Post comments if you have questions.


Boot with network support and choose fc2upgrade to start the upgrade!

then you would need to set up your repositories and do a yum update


EDIT: It appears the selinux --disabled option is ignored by the upgrade.

change bootloader to bootloader --location=mbr --append="selinux=0"

Good grief! I'd never have guessed that would work.

^ Took me a while to get it working!


Can you test it? I would like verification from others that it worked. And also to see if any other kinks pop up. I am still struggling with the selinux disabled part... Even if the FC2 box had selinux disabled, either the upgrade made it enabled or something else is wrong. But a few times no matter what I put in the upgrade kickstart I ended up having to had selinux=0 to the grub boot menu to get it to load..

Nope: testing it would involve installing FC2 first - this is so seriously obsolete I don't even have any disks. Even fedora legacy (RIP) did not support it. I'm afraid this howto would have very limited appeal.

If you want, consider doing a similar one for RH9 and FC6. These twe seem to keep popping up. Particularly RH9 - people need a way to migrate a server without risking data, and minimizing downtime.

Probably wont get around to doing a RH9 upgrade, but I do have some FC5 and FC6 boxes to upgrade to CentOS so I'll post the how to on those as well. I have 65+ machines that are FC2 that need to be CentOS! That's why I HAD to come up with this.