Hey folks, I have a bunch of core 4 boxes that act as subversion servers and I run yum every night via cron. Will this always update to the latest kernel or will it only upgrade the kernel to the highest rev. the FC4 knows about? Currently I am at 2.6.16-1.2096_FC4smp. I guess what I am asking is do I need to upgrade the os on the boxes alltogether to get the latest kernel or will yum keep me current?

Thanks.

Yum will (as far as I know) update to the latest packages (including the kernel) that is found in it's reposities. Different versions (FC 4, 5, 6, ...) have different reposities, and usually newer distribution versions (FC5 versus 4) have newer software than the older ones. As an example, I think Fedora Core 5 reposities have newer kernels than Fedora Core 4 reposities do, so if I'm right updating Fedora Core 4 using yum updates the kernel to the newest version available for Core 4. It means that there might be newer versions around, but none that have been packaged for Core 4 -- to get to a newer version you would have to upgrade the whole system from Core 4 to 5, which is not adviced to be done using Yum (I myself have, and had no problems, but you might bump into some and if it's a production system of some kind, don't do it -- rather use the install cds of the newer version, or more preferably, take backups of everything and do a clean install if you're completely forced to).

So in your case Yum will update the kernel to the newest for Core 4, but not higher. For newer kernels (if any) you will need to install Core 5 or 6 (the newest at the moment), which for production machines (i.e. servers) is not just a matter of doing a slightly bigger upgrade, but real work if you want everything to be safe and work like before. I suggest you stick with Core 4 as long as you don't have a burning panic reason to upgrade, and when you do, take backups and do a totally clean install of the new distribution.

Yum will update the kernel to the latest available kernel from the repositories. However, the machine needs to be rebooted to use the new kernel. When you haven't rebooted, you are still using your current kernel.

Cool guys thanks. What is the yum command to upgarade for 4 to 5 or 5 to 6 I would like to try it on a non prod box.

Thanks.

Here is a web site that describes how to upgrade from Fedora Core 5 to 6, but it will also work for upgrading from Fedora Core 4 to 6. http://www.ioncannon.net/system-admi...-fc6-with-yum/

Step 4 is important. When I first tried to upgrade from Fedora Core 5 to 6, there were some incompatible packages from FC5 that caused the upgrade to fail. I had to remove them to do the upgrade, then re-install them after the upgrade. Some packages from FC5 were obsolete in FC6, but FC6 provided some equivalent packages.

After the upgrade, I had few packages that were not completely updated properly. Those packages had left-over files and I had to remove them manually. My system was able to run even if those left-over files were not removed. You can find those Fedora Core 4 packages that did not update properly by running this command "rpm -qa | grep fc4". If you find any packages that have this problem, post your results.

Great site - thanks for the response - here is what happens when I try to do this:

[root@media tmp]# rpm -Uvh fedora-release-6-4.noarch.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
fedora-release-notes >= 6 is needed by fedora-release-6-4.noarch
[root@media tmp]# rpm -Uvh fedora-release-notes-6-3.noarch.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
/etc/redhat-release is needed by (installed) initscripts-8.31.6-1.i386
[root@media tmp]#

or

[root@media tmp]# rpm -Uhv http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...6-4.noarch.rpm
Retrieving http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...6-4.noarch.rpm
error: skipping http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...6-4.noarch.rpm - transfer failed - Unknown or unexpected error
Segmentation fault


any ideas?

Thanks

I see that fedora-release-6-4.noarch.rpm and fedora-release-notes-6-3.noarch.rpm require each other. Try updating both of them at the same time by doing this: Hopefully, we won't see your segmentation fault problem.

Hey, thanks fo rth eresponse. that almost worked!

I ran them both together and it started to add things but then died with this error:

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Missing Dependency: libgcj.so.7 is needed by package eclipse-pydev
[root@media tmp]#


Any ideas on how to fix this?

Thanks!

I would remove eclipse-pydev then retry the previous update command. Remove eclipse-pydev with Yum by using this command "yum remove eclipse-pydev". You can add eclipse-pydev back on after doing the update. Tell me how this goes.

That worked perfectly, after the update a reboot and a uname I get fc6 and everything works!

Thanks!