I downloaded the DVD image of Fedora Core 5 from XXXX and burned it to a DVD. I performed the mediacheck option and the DVD is good.

I am attempting to upgrade my FC4 installation to FC5. I boot from the DVD and go through all the prompts... The installer locates the previous installation correctly.

The installer updates my bootloader and a message appears that it is examining my previous installation. There is hard drive activity for a few minutes as the progress bar crawls. The progress bar gets to 100% and it seems to hang (I've waited as long as 20 minutes for the next step before giving up).

Is there some way around this problem?

if you're upgrading an existing installation, why not just do it over yum? use the dvd image as a repository and just do a "yum upgrade" and off it goes.

Thank you for your suggestion...

There are two reasons I haven't done the upgrade via Yum. Perhaps you can help me with them...

1. I read on here that it's a non-specific 'bad idea' to upgrade distros via Yum. I don't know why, but that's what I've seen. Can you shed any light on this rumor?

2. I don't know how to do it! If you'd be so kind as to tell me specifically how to configure the DVD drive as a repository and upgrade via Yum, I'd appreciate it.

personally i had no problems whatsoever when i upgraded. potentially it can be dangerous, but i've never regeretted it. just mount the dvd image and install the fedora-release rpm on it. then just run "yum upgrade". this won't actually use the files on the dvd though, to be honest i don't know how to add a local resource to yum, but if i did, i'm sure i'd say it was fairly easy...

What's 'potentially dangerous' about doing the upgrade via Yum -- what should I look out for?

honestly i don't know about this one inparticular... the only thing i noticed that made me feel a little uneasy was that it upgraded the kernel rather than installing the new one along side the old one. i'd suggest installing the kernel directly from the dvd (rpm -ivh /mnt/dvd/Redhat/RPMS/kernel-2.6.something....rpm) and then removing the old one when you're happy with the new kernel. other than that there is nothing specific i am aware of.

Thank you very much for your insight. I will try this approach and report back what happens!

I have exactly the same problem with upgrading my Fedora Core 3 to 5 except that my upgrade attempt hangs at "Preparing transaction with installation source" with some ca 90 percent done. I am so disappointed, because Fedora Core is the only linux distro that gave me "reasonable" problems so far...
Looking forward to solutions for this...
Cheers!

Still no luck on my end, either. I'm stuck at the same spot when trying to upgrade my FC4 to FC5.

Please, can anyone help?

check for errors on your debugging terminals Ctrl+AltF1 to F6

I had the same problem when using a DVD.
Finally I used the cd's (iso files) which I had downloaded from the Fedora site.
Upgrading from cd worked smoothly.