Upgrade the Rhel 2 to Rhel 5
 

Hi ,


Can any one help over here.

Currently we are running our application running on the Rhel2.1 and now we want to upgrade its to kernel to latest Rhel 5 while keeping all old binary files as it is (dont want to updgrade old binaries like perl, php etc as the application is dependent on the them ) because the application running dependent on the old binary files.

Thanks in Advance for your help!!!!!!!!

Ravinder

this is absolutely not possible. The upgrade process can not do this, and packages Perl is an integral part of the operating system, and need to be kept up to date, indeed that is what RHEL IS, it's not possible to upgrade without... upgrading things.

As acid_kewpie is is not possbile to not touch the core system files like php and perl.

I suggest you to install a fresh machine, and then move the application there.. And if you have some problems with app, you or sbd else need to made some code correction..

Be aware, that there could be also a secrutiy risk in your code if it is not valid under never php/perl..
I will strongly recomment updateing the code, and OS

Also, the latest RHEL is 6.x, not 5. And, RHEL is a commercial distro. Unless you're going to PAY for RHEL, then you should NOT be using it. Use CentOS instead, since it's 99.x% identical to RHEL, but free. If you're running a server for a company, using RHEL, and not paying for it, that's a colossally BAD IDEA. You will then NOT get bugfixes/security updates/patches, and your entire server will be unstable and easily compromised.

If you ARE paying for RHEL support, you can call Red Hat, and they can try to assist you, but I'll very much agree with the others here. If you have code that's so old (RHEL2 is VERY old), it can only use very old versions of programs, then you need to update them. If you don't want to, then keep using RHEL2...and good luck when the hardware you're on dies, since RHEL2 will NOT support new hardware.

From the other duplicate (message by me):
I did this before. The truth is that even older Linux server are still in operation, just as many DOS servers are. You (John VV) can't just say: forget about your software, forget about COBOL and Fortran. The real world just doesn't work like that.

As for the problem, I also advice using a fresh CentOS6 base, as you probably don't care about commercial (paid) RedHat support if you were still using 2.1. After installing 6.3, copy your old disk (the whole thing) in /opt/rhel21 by mounting it, then use
Then use the "chroot" command to create a jail of the RedHat EL 2.1 in 6.3. I tried other methods such as virtualisation and emulator. They ofter fail because the distribution is so old that it is untested. The jail seem to hold on pretty well compared to other alternatives. When I tried in RHEL5, the newer kernel could run the old binaries (application) without visible drawback. It could even start X application on the native RHEL6.3 display.

So, if you need to migrate RHEL2.1 to RHEL6, you can't, but you can have both running in parallel on the same computer. Remember that this is totally unsupported and may require advanced Linux skill to make it work. After you get the jail working, make an init script to start it during boot (LVL 2 or 3). Booting a jail require custom bootscript, as it is not the same as a native boot (you need to bind /dev, /dev/pts, /sys, /proc and start services manually)