November 29, 2022

Fedora 36 -- upgrade via DNF

Fedora 37 just came out, so I suppose it is time to upgrade from 35 to 36.

I will first upgrade my home system from F34 to F35.

I get started at 4:33 PM. 

su
dnf update
This give me a new version of google chrome. Hopefully it has fixed the PDF file display bug. I have been running (and liking) Firefox instead of chrome because of it.

I am one kernel behind, but I am just not going to sweat that and do the upgrade without rebooting. 

su
dnf upgrade --refresh   (yields: nothing to do)
dnf -y system-upgrade download --refresh --releasever=36
dnf system-upgrade reboot

4326 packages.

The download is finished at 5:02 PM (so it took 29 minutes).

However, it is telling me it needs at least 2500 MB more space on the root filesystem (my SSD).

I spend some time with "du -s -x" poking around. Nothing in particular stands out. I have a 128G SSD that holds root (only) and is 96 percent full. 

su
cd /var/cache/akmods/nvidia
rm *nvidia-5*
rm *for-5*
cd /var/lib/mlocate
rm *
cd /opt
mkdir /u1/opt
mv arduino /u1/opt
mv esp-open-sdk /u1/opt
ln -s /u1/opt/arduino arduino
dnf erase zoom

Zoom never worked on Fedora, so naturally I never used it.
Probably the entire /opt directory should just be a link.

The directory /var/lib/containers is big and I have no idea what or why anything is using "containers".

After doing these cleanup, I am down to 84 percent full and I repeat the download. It rapidly skips virtually everything (since it has already been downloaded). It looks happy now, so I do the "reboot" step.

At 6:09 I am finished, up and running Fedora 36. Space on root is now 72 percent.

And now for Fedora 37

Fedora 36 worked fine for an evening, so while I am at it I may as well make the next jump. I started with root 73 percent in use. After the clean all it was 68 percent in use. I moved /opt to /u1/opt and replaced it with a line. Now I have 66 percent in use. After all this I redo the "--refresh" command, and it takes a while now. It ends with nothing to do and 66 percent free.

What the heck is an entitlement server? They say you should just dnf erase "subscription-manager", but take care it doesn't take half the world with it.

  • Entitlement server 
    su
dnf update
dnf upgrade --refresh   (yields: nothing to do)
dnf clean all
dnf upgrade --refresh   (yields: nothing to do)
dnf -y system-upgrade download --refresh --releasever=37
dnf system-upgrade reboot
    I begin the download around 9:20 AM. By 9:42 it tells me it is happy and ready for the reboot step. It also coaches me that I can remove cached packages via: 
    dnf clean packages
dnf system-upgrade clean
    By 10:15 I am up and running Fedora 17, 55 minutes for the upgrade. I see 68 percent in use on my root partition.
    Running "dnf clean packages" does nothing.
    Neither does "dnf system-upgrade clean"

    Then I do this (good riddance!): 

    [root@trona tom]# dnf erase subscription-manager
Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Unable to read consumer identity

This system is not registered with an entitlement server. You can use subscription-manager to register.

Dependencies resolved.
================================================================================
 Package                              Arch     Version          Repo       Size
================================================================================
Removing:
 subscription-manager                 x86_64   1.29.30-1.fc37   @fedora   3.7 M
Removing unused dependencies:
 libdnf-plugin-subscription-manager   x86_64   1.29.30-1.fc37   @fedora    64 k
 python3-cloud-what                   x86_64   1.29.30-1.fc37   @fedora    73 k
 python3-ethtool                      x86_64   0.15-4.fc37      @fedora    92 k
 python3-iniparse                     noarch   0.5-3.fc37       @fedora   131 k
 python3-inotify                      noarch   0.9.6-28.fc37    @fedora   316 k
 python3-librepo                      x86_64   1.14.4-1.fc37    @fedora   183 k
 python3-subscription-manager-rhsm    x86_64   1.29.30-1.fc37   @fedora   546 k
 virt-what                            x86_64   1.25-1.fc37      @fedora    56 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Remove  9 Packages
Freed space: 5.2 M

    Now my machine at the university

    Uptime shows this has been running for 157 days. Of course it is running a very old kernel, so I reboot it. The rest of the process goes without a hitch. I leave it doing the upgrade reset while I cook breakfast and socialize, so I have no idea how long it actually took.

    I dive right in to the upgrade to 37. This one gets into trouble. I do this remotely, so I fire off the "upgrade reboot", the system disconnects, I cross my fingers and wait. After an hour (more or less) I log back in and it is running f36,' which is not good.

    I search in /var/log/messages. The thing to do here is to look for the string "package". I find this: 

    Problem opening package iwlax2xx-firmware-20221109-144.fc37.noarch.rpm
Dec  1 12:37:24 cholla dnf[759]: Error: GPG check FAILED
    These are "Intel wireless drivers" and once a subset of "linux-firmware" and are most certainly something I never needed and don't need now. 
    dnf erase iwlax2xx-firmware
    There are no dependencies, so it goes away cleanly. I repeat the download command which quickly skips all the stuff it already downloaded and then repeats the transaction check. This goes OK, so I try the "upgrade reboot" once again.

    It came through! This system does take a long time to process the packages given that it does not have a SSD. I would say that you need to give this system at least 2 hours before getting alarmed and driving across town to fix things.

    I see comments in the "messages" file about problems with sda, so I need to think about being ready to replace it. The disk is a 2T WDC WD20EZRZ-00Z

    And now the mirror lab machines

    These each go smoothly and each takes only 20 minutes total! That is what a modern machine with an M.2 solid state disk does for you.
    Have any comments? Questions? Drop me a line!

    Adventures in Computing / [email protected]