Upgrading RHEL 3 to 5
 

Apparently 3 has gone end of life, but I've never upgraded a RHEL server before. I'm afraid of what might happen to my existing server. Does anyone have a good link to a doc on how to do this? Hopefully one that's in easy to understand terms ;-)

It's better to do a fresh installation and migrate your applications to the new system.

:twocents:

When upgrading major revisions 3.x to 5.x you are best off doing a bare bones install. You might also consider going to RHEL6.0 as it is now released and that will give you at least another five years until it has to done again.

Edit: need to learn to type faster.

You could copy a current installation to a staging server (virtualization?) and test an upgrade but in general I agree: 3 is way different compared to 5. A fresh install will cost you in terms of time and effort but will save some as well.

Unfortunately this is a server with multiple external arrays of data on it, so i'm not even sure where i could virtualize it to or anything to test. and i dont have the cash to buy a duplicate setup to build a new one either. :'(

The reality is that you are going to pay one way or another:

1. Cough up for RHEL6 full support.

2. Do nothing and risk exposure.

3. Update and risk downtime.

4. Buy/rent/borrow hardware to do a test server.

There are probably lots of other options but each is going to have a price.

to add to "lazlow's" list
5) but new up-to-date hardware
if the hardware is as old as RHEL3 you really should upgrade it

https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-35284.