Update FC distro without reinstall
 

Hello. I installed Fedora Core 1 a long time ago (maybe 2 years ago). Up until 2 weeks ago I had 56k with a moronic ISP that wouldn't allow me to connect while on Linux. Therefore, I hadn't used linux in all that time. I figured it would be pointless if I couldn't get online with it. I kept it installed the entire time. Well, having gotten DSL recently, I decided to give linux a try again. Since I installed FC1 as a dualboot years ago, I logged in fine onto linux and am now online with it. The problem is, I haven't gotten any updates in all those 2 years because I couldn't get online. I recently read the FAQ for YUM, but it only has instructions for FC3 and FC4. Needless to say, I'm behind. Sorry for the long story, but here's my question(s):

1. Is there any way I can download a new FC version over yum and have it update automatically?

2. If not, I'm willing to download the new FC version manually. When I do that, do I have to delete the FC1 install from that partition or can I just overwrite FC1 with the new version? If I start to install FC4 (or whatever the newest one is), and choose the partition that FC1 is on currently, will it just overwrite FC1 with no errors or trouble?

Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

-Greatness

There are some disorganized instructions on the Internet for upgrading from between certain consecutive releases of FC; but it's strongly not recommended. If possible, use the install CDs and save a lot of trouble.

You can choose the "upgrade" option, which doesn't delete the partition and tries to upgrade the packages on the FC1 system with packages from the newer release of FC. This method may cause a few small problems since the structure of packages and their names change a lot between releases of FC, but it will probably work okay.

You can also choose to do a "clean install", which erases the partition and installs a new system, and so should not have any problems other than those relating to new installations.

The newest release of FC is FC5, by the way.

thanks very much for replying to all parts of my question. Alright, so I'll download FC5 and install it. Now, If I do upgrade or clean install, what will happen to the boot loader (GRUB in my case)? Will dual booting still work (this is very important to me)?

-Greatness

Doing a fresh insall of FC5 will prompt you to install a bootloader (GRUB) and detect other OS' running so it wont be a problem

I used the install CDs to upgrade from fc2 to fc3 and fc3 to fc4. You don't need to erase your previous installation. It did take awhile to do the upgrade, but it seemed to go without a hitch in both cases.

Thank you, I appreciate the quick responses. I guess I'll try to use the upgrade option, and if I run into trouble I'll do a clean install.

**Problem fixed (so far)**

-Greatness