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Red Hat Linux Fedora: Fedora 12 to Fedora 13 upgrade.

Fedora 13 has been out now since around May 25th, so it's time for the semi annual upgrade.  Unlike with previous versions, I've now switched to the GNOME desktop since I have been finding the KDE desktop to be far less intuitive then it's former competitor and far less responsive.  (As you recall from the previous upgrades, KDE was introduced rewritten almost entirely in Qt4).  The only benefactors of the new KDE appear to be my kids.  The start menu panel in KDE seams more easy to use for them then GNOME's start menus, though I'm sure a little tweaking in GNOME can fix that.
See the previous upgrade from Fedora 10 and Fedora 11 or the more recent Fedora 11 to Fedora 12 upgrade for some earlier issues that may arise when you upgrade through the levels.  Fedora 13 has numerous improvements to it's video and sound, something that has been causing me alot of issues on my HTPC Fedora installation for my Nvidia .  So I'm eager to try out Fedora 13 to see if the new improvements will make any difference.

QUICK STEPS

  1. nice -n 19 yum update (If you get No Packages marked for Update you are good.)
  2. cd /some/dir
  3. mkdir ./F12toF13
  4. cd ./F12toF13
  5. Ensure you have debuglevel=10 and errorlevel=10 enabled in /etc/yum.conf in case we need more debugging information to sift through and identify why something failed.
  6. nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade (should be the same as step 1 above)
  7. nice -n 19 yum clean all
  8. nice -n 19 yum clean all (Just to make sure everything looks clean)
  9. wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/13/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-13-3.fc13.noarch.rpm
  10. wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/13/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-13-1.noarch.rpm 
  11. rpm -Uvh fedora-release*.rpm
  12. cat /etc/fedora-release  (Make sure ‘Fedora release 13 (Goddard)‘ appears )
  13. nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade 2>&1|tee -a ./F12-to-F13-upgrade.June.5.2010.4:00.PM.txt
  14. Refer below for any issues and repeat from step 12) as necessary.

 

RUNNING INTO PROBLEMS

The problems are generally similar throughout the upgrades.  Most issues can be resolved by removing the conflicting package as I did in many cases. I do this once I review the package to find out if I really need it or simply reinstall it after.

The fascinating thing with the Fedora 13 upgrade is that there were no packages to upgrade as the previous Fedora 12 upgrade apparently already braught in the latest packages available.  That is until I discovered I didn't do step 7 and 8. 🙁  Cleaning up the packages and rerunning step 13, got me back on track, so to speak as the penguin tripped and fell soon after:

–> Finished Dependency Resolution
Dependency Process ending
1:libgnomedb-3.99.7-3.fc11.i586 from installed has depsolving problems
  –> Package: 1:libgnomedb-3.99.7-3.fc11.i586 (@fedora/11)
  –>     Requires: libgvc.so.4
  –>     Removing: graphviz-2.20.3-5.fc12.1.i686 (@fedora/12)
rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 from installed has depsolving problems
  –> Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
  –>     Requires: libboost_system-mt.so.5
  –>     Removing: boost-system-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
system-logviewer-0.9.11-1.noarch from installed has depsolving problems
  –> Package: system-logviewer-0.9.11-1.noarch (installed)
  –>     Requires: htmlview
  –>     Removing: htmlview-4.0.0-6.fc12.noarch (@fedora/12)
rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 from installed has depsolving problems
  –> Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
  –>     Requires: libboost_filesystem-mt.so.5
  –>     Removing: boost-filesystem-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 from installed has depsolving problems
  –> Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
  –>     Requires: libboost_thread-mt.so.5
  –>     Removing: boost-thread-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
Depsolve time: 73.062
Error: Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
           Requires: libboost_system-mt.so.5
           Removing: boost-system-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
Error: Package: system-logviewer-0.9.11-1.noarch (installed)
           Requires: htmlview
           Removing: htmlview-4.0.0-6.fc12.noarch (@fedora/12)
Error: Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
           Requires: libboost_thread-mt.so.5
           Removing: boost-thread-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
Error: Package: 1:libgnomedb-3.99.7-3.fc11.i586 (@fedora/11)
           Requires: libgvc.so.4
           Removing: graphviz-2.20.3-5.fc12.1.i686 (@fedora/12)
Error: Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
           Requires: libboost_filesystem-mt.so.5
           Removing: boost-filesystem-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
 You could try using –skip-broken to work around the problem
VFlib2-conf-ja-2.25.6-28.i386 has missing requires of fonts-japanese
2:lam-libs-7.1.4-9.fc12.i686 is a duplicate with 2:lam-libs-7.1.2-11.fc9.i386
libXfontcache-devel-1.0.4-5.fc9.i386 has missing requires of libXfontcache = ('0', '1.0.4', '5.fc9')
libXfontcache-devel-1.0.4-5.fc9.i386 has missing requires of libXfontcache.so.1
policy-strict-sources-1.11.3-3.noarch has missing requires of policy = ('0', '1.11.3', '3')
 

Looking through the output, this time we have a suggestion of what we can try.  So I rerun step 13 in this manner:

nice -n 19 yum -y upgrade –skip-broken 2>&1|tee -a ./F12-to-F13-upgrade.June.5.2010.4:00.PM.txt

to see if this is going to work.   The results were better:

Skip-Broken time: 272.894
Depsolve time: 359.051
Error: Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
           Requires: libboost_system-mt.so.5
           Removing: boost-system-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
Error: Package: system-logviewer-0.9.11-1.noarch (installed)
           Requires: htmlview
           Removing: htmlview-4.0.0-6.fc12.noarch (@fedora/12)
Error: Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
           Requires: libboost_thread-mt.so.5
           Removing: boost-thread-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
Error: Package: 1:libgnomedb-3.99.7-3.fc11.i586 (@fedora/11)
           Requires: libgvc.so.4
           Removing: graphviz-2.20.3-5.fc12.1.i686 (@fedora/12)
Error: Package: rb_libtorrent-0.14.10-1.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
           Requires: libboost_filesystem-mt.so.5
           Removing: boost-filesystem-1.39.0-9.fc12.i686 (@updates/12)
VFlib2-conf-ja-2.25.6-28.i386 has missing requires of fonts-japanese
2:lam-libs-7.1.4-9.fc12.i686 is a duplicate with 2:lam-libs-7.1.2-11.fc9.i386
libXfontcache-devel-1.0.4-5.fc9.i386 has missing requires of libXfontcache = ('0', '1.0.4', '5.fc9')
libXfontcache-devel-1.0.4-5.fc9.i386 has missing requires of libXfontcache.so.1
policy-strict-sources-1.11.3-3.noarch has missing requires of policy = ('0', '1.11.3', '3')
 

but more work was still needed:

# rpm -aq|grep lam-libs
lam-libs-7.1.2-11.fc9.i386
lam-libs-7.1.4-9.fc12.i686

revealed that in fact we did have duplicates then following some advice here I was able to remove the fc9 package and rerun the updated step 13 above.  This yielded some of the same errors so I removed the packages:

# rpm -e VFlib2-conf-ja-2.25.6-28.i386
# rpm -e libXfontcache-devel-1.0.4-5.fc9.i386
# rpm -e policy-strict-sources-1.11.3-3.noarch

That was all that was needed to get the system to upgrade.

 

ALTERNATE METHOD USING PREUPGRADE / PREUPGRADE-CLI

Paul W. Frields pointed out below an alternative way using 'preupgrade'.  I've tried this method with mixed results but ultimately had to revert to my previous steps above.  Here's the steps I've followed and some of the issues I've encountered:

I've started to use preupgrade-cli (preupgrade is the GUI end and can only be used from a XWindows system) as I needed to do the upgrade remotely (Yes I guess you can call me lazy for not wanting to go downstairs to run the GUI version).  Not surprisingly, my attempt to run preupgrade remotely yielded:

[root@htpc ~]# preupgrade
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/preupgrade/preupgrade-gtk.py", line 53, in <module>
    import gtk
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py", line 64, in <module>
    _init()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py", line 52, in _init
    _gtk.init_check()
RuntimeError: could not open display

So I found preupgrade-cli instead:

[root@htpc ~]# which preupgrade-cli
/usr/sbin/preupgrade-cli
[root@htpc ~]# preupgrade-cli
Loading "blacklist" plugin
Loading "whiteout" plugin
No plugin match for: rpm-warm-cache
No plugin match for: remove-with-leaves
Config time: 0.198
Loading "auto-update-debuginfo" plugin
Not loading "blacklist" plugin, as it is disabled
Loading "presto" plugin
Loading "refresh-packagekit" plugin
Not loading "whiteout" plugin, as it is disabled
Running "config" handler for "presto" plugin
Config time: 0.164
please give a release to try to pre-upgrade to
valid entries include:
   "Fedora 13 (Goddard)"
   "Rawhide"
[root@htpc ~]#

Since we want the Fedora 13 (Gouddard) upgrade, I typed this:

[root@htpc ~]# preupgrade-cli "Fedora 13 (Goddard)"
Loading "blacklist" plugin
Loading "whiteout" plugin
No plugin match for: rpm-warm-cache
No plugin match for: remove-with-leaves
Config time: 0.189
Loading "auto-update-debuginfo" plugin
Not loading "blacklist" plugin, as it is disabled
.
.
.
up:simple updates time: 0.796
up:obs time: 0.013
up:condense time: 0.000
updates time: 3.244
Depsolve time: 0.032
Total download size: 0.0bytes
Download packages?
Is this ok [y/N]:
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Running "predownload" handler for "presto" plugin
Generating metadata for preupgrade repo
preupgrade                                                                                                                           | 3.7 kB     00:00     
preupgrade/primary_db                                                                                                                | 1.8 MB     00:02     
preupgrade/group                                                                                                                     | 1.6 MB     00:02     

Saving Primary metadata
Saving file lists metadata
Saving other metadata
Generating sqlite DBs
Sqlite DBs complete
Preparing system to boot into installer
DEBUG /sbin/grubby –title="Upgrade to Fedora 13 (Goddard)" –remove-kernel="/boot/upgrade/vmlinuz" –add-kernel="/boot/upgrade/vmlinuz" –initrd="/boot/upgrade/initrd.img" –args="preupgrade repo=hd::/var/cache/yum/preupgrade  ks=hd:UUID=60d75740-2531-4a44-922a-dc41a822d0aa:/upgrade/ks.cfgstage2=ftp://ftp.nrc.ca/pub/systems/linux/redhat/fedora/linux/releases/13/Fedora/i386/os/images/install.img"
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
All finished. The upgrade will begin when you reboot.
[root@htpc ~]#

I've restarted the machine as instructed (I would have to actually go to that PC downstairs and restart it but elected to run shutdown -r now instead remotely though I realized soon after I still had to go downstairs to see what was happening with my HTPC.)

The preupgrade-cli utility added another kernel to boot off of.  However, due to my P4P800 motherboard ACPI issues, the kernel hung on:

ACPI: Core revision 20091214
ACPI: Setting ELCR to 0200 (from 0c20)

This was easily fixed by adding acpi=off to the boot parameters of the Fedora 13 upgrade kernel.  However, on second attempt, the 42 inch Samsung TV the system is plugged into, only printed:

Not supported mode.

At this point I rebooted the machine and used the Fedora 12 kernel, which booted me to my system (I could have played with the kernel video boot settings with the vga= option but at this point just to get the upgrade going was taking too much time).  As I wanted to do the upgrade from my first PC, the preupgrade method was turning out to be a bit more involving then the yum method above I had used countlessly (My linux distribution was continously upgraded from Fedora Core 2 to Fedota 13 on my work PC using yum, though not always a smooth operation). 

I was also forced to reboot before I start the upgrade, something yum doesn't force you to do.  (Yum allowed me to upgrade a system while I'm actively using it for other things.  I could defer the reboot to another time if I wanted at the end of the upgrade.)  

Though the preupgrade method may be for some, I was not able to progress far enough with it to make use of it or to be able to comment further on it.  Unfortunately, I didn't have luck with it but that is not to say it is not a more appropriate choice for others.
 

Cheers!
TK

3 Responses to “Red Hat Linux Fedora: Fedora 12 to Fedora 13 upgrade.”

  1. For a lot of people, installing and running ‘preupgrade’ makes this process a lot easier.

  2. Hi Paul,

    Very good timing on this comment. I’ve one more F12 machine to upgrade. 🙂

    Cheers!
    TK

  3. […] that greets you before you login to your GUI  is  set to GNOME (Even now with Fedora 13 out, the same is still true).  Now I was an avid KDE user and though I started on […]

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