[SOLVED] Update a CentOS 5 virtual server to CentOS 5.6

dazdaz · 04-09-2011, 04:45 PM

I would like to update a CentOS 5 virtual server to CentOS 5.6

I've never done this before and I would be greatful for any hints/tips/guides on the process.

I can't format my system as I have software/files that I need on there so I would like to upgrade rather than to install from scratch.

The CentOS documentation seems to come straight from RedHat and suggests that I connect to the RHN network, which is not possible as i'm using the free CentOS release.

Is the procedure the following, sorry but I really don't know. How safe is this procedure, if it works :

Code:

modify yum.conf to point to a 5.6 mirror and then perform the following commands :
yum clean all
yum update
shutdown -r now

unSpawn · 04-09-2011, 06:01 PM

Running 'yum update' should do. I just upgraded one guest on VMware server and all went OK. Best read the release notes first though.

anomie · 04-09-2011, 06:18 PM

Back up your important files and - in particular - make a tarball of your existing /etc, just in case.

Code:

# tar cfz /root/good-etc.tgz /etc

RHEL (and, by extension, CentOS) is very good about not trampling on config files during package updates, but they're not perfect. I ran into a particularly vexing multipathing issue the other day after upgrading across minor versions. Point is: have a good version to compare against, just in case your regression testing turns up trouble.

unSpawn · 04-10-2011, 04:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by unSpawn

I just upgraded one guest on VMware server and all went OK.

3 VM's later all still OK. One physical machine displayed errors after upgrade caused by:
- iscsi and iscsid: disable both if not required,
- haldaemon: reverting back to old startup mantra "/usr/sbin/hald --daemon=yes --verbose=no --use-syslog" works OK for me,
- setroubleshootd showing [avc.WARNING] could not open any audit sockets (/var/run/audispd_events, /var/run/audit_events), retry in 60 seconds error meaning the /var/run/audit_events socket does not exist: commenting out the binary_protocol_socket_path line in /etc/setroubleshoot/setroubleshoot.cfg makes the warning disappear.

dazdaz · 04-10-2011, 05:02 AM

I also followed this procedure to update my PHP RPM's to 5.2.x.

http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/PHP_5.1_To_5.2