Fedora Core 12 yum upgrade notes

Fedora 12 is just out (11-19-2009) and I am going to give it a whirl by upgrading one of my Fedora 11 systems.

The word is that you cannot jump from fedora 10 to 12, you must do this from a fedora 11 system. See the YUM upgrade FAQ for important details on this issue.
Note that neither could you jump via a yum upgrade from 9 to 11.

New compression scheme

Since the rpm packages in 12 use a new compression scheme, be sure to 
yum update rpm
You want rpm 4.7.1-1 or better. I do 
yum list | grep rpm
and I discover that my up to date Fedora 11 system is running 4.7.1-3, so I am cool.

Backup vital things

As always, I do a backup of vital files: 
cd /root
mkdir -p f11-f12
cd  f11-f12
# gather info for potential recovery later
tar -C / -czf etc.tgz etc
rpm -qa --qf '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n' | sort > rpm.ls.f11
chkconfig --list > chkconfig.ls.f11
ifconfig > ifconfig
route -n > route-n
df -h > df-h
cp -p /boot/grub/grub.conf grub.conf.f11

Switch repositories and do the upgrade

I copy all the old .repo files (for F11) into /etc/yum.repos.d/F11 (just in case, this is probably silly).

Then I pull in the fedora-release rpm (fedora-release-12-1.noarch.rpm) by hand from the repository we will be switching to using the following commands: 

yum clean all
#rpm -Uhv ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/x86_64/os/Packages/fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uhv http://mmt/fedora/releases/12/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-12-1.noarch.rpm

In case you are interested, the contents of this RPM are: 

rpm -qlp fedora-release-12-1.noarch.rpm
/etc/fedora-release
/etc/issue
/etc/issue.net
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-12-primary
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-i386
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-ppc
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-ppc64
/etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-x86_64
/etc/redhat-release
/etc/rpm/macros.dist
/etc/system-release
/etc/system-release-cpe
/etc/yum.repos.d
/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-rawhide.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates-testing.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo
/etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo
/usr/share/doc/fedora-release-12
/usr/share/doc/fedora-release-12/GPL
After this, I double check that the stuff in yum.repos.d still points to our mirror (it does). And then I hand upgrade first rpm, then yum: 
yum update rpm\*
This pulls in a new version of rpm (4.7.1-6.fc12) along with a new glibc. 
yum update yum\*
this pulls in a new yum (3.2.25-1.fc12) along with a few other things.

So now it is time to go for broke with: 

yum -y update
It is ready to install 140 packages and upgrade 1297 packages, away we go!!

Note the -y option that tells it to not stop with some stupid question, but assume you want to type yes to any question and keep things moving.

This all seems to chug along, with a few messages of note: 

warning: /etc/shadow created as /etc/shadow.rpmnew
warning: /etc/ldap.conf created as /etc/ldap.conf.rpmnew
...
I/O warning : failed to load external entity "gnome-sudoku.schemas"
Failed to open `gnome-sudoku.schemas': No such file or directory
...
W: Possible missing firmware ql8100_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
W: Possible missing firmware ql2500_fw.bin for module qla2xxx.ko
W: Possible missing firmware aic94xx-seq.fw for module aic94xx.ko
After maybe 1-2 hours, this all finishes and it is time to reboot.

The reboot goes smoothly, rhgb does not resurrect itself, network manager stays gone and so my network configuration does not get demolished. All in all this looks absolutely smooth. I am up and running with a fc12 kernel!!

GDM changes

Well, the first annoying thing is that the option to reboot or shut down a machine has vanished from the login screen. We will need to see if we can do something about this!

Once upon a time, there was a file called: /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf, these days are apparently long gone. Then there was a file called: /etc/gdm/custom.conf, on my current systems, it contains: 

# GDM configuration storage

[xdmcp]

[chooser]

[security]

[debug]
I find this disheartening. At one point in time, there was a [greeter] section in this file, and in this section you could set SystemMenu=true to enable the things I long for, but alas adding a section like this does not do a doggoned thing. Rumor has it, there is or was something called gdmconfig with a security tab and a way to enable or disable the "action menu" which would be just what I want. Hey, some people want this and some don't, it would be great if it were a configurable option. What really makes this grim is that there is no man page for gdm!! Way long long ago, there was just xdm. Then along came gnome, and xdm wasn't good enough, so now we have gdm, and heaven help us to know how to keep track of it.

There is a file /etc/dbus-1/system.d/gdm.conf, who knows what this is all about.

This isn't exactly what I asked for (but really close). A tap on the power button brings up a menu allowing me to restart or shutdown or cancel. That ain't bad.

render error

Whenever the machine boots, there is a short delay and then before the usual list of services starting I get 2 or 3 lines complaining about a "render error". This is some kind of issue with video drivers and this ridiculous boot time graphics thing some folks are enamored with. Happily it doesn't seem to do any harm and the system boots up OK, this will probably get fixed down the road without any fuss on my part.

selinux

This seems to have resurrected itself. This is pretty easy to get rid of though, edit /etc/selinux/config and change "enforcing" to "disabled", then reboot. (This may be a relic of the FC11 install, not the FC12 updgrade on this particular system, either way, I don't want it getting into my hair).
Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

Adventures in Computing / [email protected]