I have a situation I've come into where there are 3 Mandrake 9.0 machines that really need to be updated to something newer. My Mandrake/Mandriva knowledge is quite lacking.

I've tried running the Mandrake Update under Configuration>Packaging, but it obviously didn't work since the mirrors from the old Mandrake site are no longer around. I have 2 questions:

1. Can I manually enter a different mirror for Mandriva that will work with the updater in Mandrake 9.0?

2. If not, is Mandriva designed so that I can update directly from an earlier Mandrake version, specifically 9.0? Should I update to Mandrake 10, then update to Mandriva, or is any of this possible without rebuilding the machines?

if you get mandriva 2006, or mandrake 10.1 then when you pop the disk in it will give you the option to upgrade your current mandrake installation or start afresh. Its generally considered better though to do a fresh install, back up all your data and config files, then just do a fresh install with the latest version, or 10.1. Some people have reported various problems after using the upgrade option

mandriva mirrors may not have any more updates. last time i spoke with mandriva i think they said 10.0 was done in august 05.

out side of that i would follow Michael_aust advice. and if you do upgrade i would install the latest version so all you have to do to update is urpmi --auto-select. my mandriva contact (i think said) updates and support will last for 5 years.

Back up your data and do a fresh install. There is no way an upgrade can be expected to go smoothly. Mdk 9.0 was known to be a buggy release for starters; it uses an old 2.4 kernel with devfs which is now deprecated. Mandriva 2006 uses a modern 2.6 kernel(2.6.12) with udev and HAL. In addition, mandriva upgrade installs are pretty buggy even when upgrading only one level much less the 6 levels you are talking about between mdk 9.0 and mdv 2006. Trying to do an upgrade from mdk 9.0 to a current mandriva release is asking for problems and lots of them IMHO.

Here's the current mandriva support policy:

http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/security/productlifetime

Looks like it's about 1 year unless you get the corporate versions.

i stand corrected. thank you kilgoretrout. i was thinking of the corporate club with the 5 year thing.

I have the same problem. I'm using Mandrake 10.1, at first I thought that there was something wrong with my computer until I read this post. Now I feel pretty relieved that it wasn't my computer.