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Interview: Fedora developers Seth Vidal and Will Woods (Red Hat Magazine)
Red Hat Magazine has an
interview with Fedora developers Seth Vidal and Will Woods.
In Fedora, the supported method for upgrading from one release to the next
is by downloading the media and rebooting from the media and using
Anaconda. Why was this the case, and what's wrong with a yum upgrade?
Seth Vidal: Anaconda has the advantage of running outside of the system it is upgrading. This means it can do certain tricks in the event of big changes. The lvm->lvm2 migration, for example. Yum can't do this. Changing the partition or fs type on a running partition is a bad idea :) Will Woods: Another good example: In Fedora 9 we have (experimental) ext4 support, and Anaconda is capable of migrating your ext3 filesystems to ext4 automatically. But yum upgrades can't handle this. (Log in to post comments)
Interview: Fedora developers Seth Vidal and Will Woods (Red Hat Magazine) Posted Apr 16, 2008 5:56 UTC (Wed) by djabsolut (guest, #12799) [Link] Anaconda has the advantage of running outside of the system it is upgrading. During an upgrade from FC5->FC7, I've had the pleasure of the installer deleting the contents of /home , even though I explicitly told it not to touch it. I like Fedora, but this experience suggests that the risk of doing a live yum upgrade is lower.
Interview: Fedora developers Seth Vidal and Will Woods (Red Hat Magazine) Posted Apr 16, 2008 8:14 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] even though I explicitly told it not to touch it. I'm intrigued, after many years of upgrading Red Hat and then RHEL, CentOS and Fedora systems, I've never seen any option to ask the Anaconda _upgrade_ process "explicitly" not to touch anything. Where is this option?
Interview: Fedora developers Seth Vidal and Will Woods (Red Hat Magazine) Posted Apr 17, 2008 1:52 UTC (Thu) by djabsolut (guest, #12799) [Link] If I remember correctly, the installer had/has an option to format partitions. My setup had "/" and "/home" as separate partitions. I allowed it to do what it liked with "/", but not with "/home" -- it went ahead and formatted "/home" anyway.
Interview: Fedora developers Seth Vidal and Will Woods (Red Hat Magazine) Posted Apr 17, 2008 6:12 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link] That's interesting - I've been doing similar upgrades since fc3 (!) and have never had that occur. That's not to say I blindly trust anaconda, I still make backups of $HOME!
Interview: Fedora developers Seth Vidal and Will Woods (Red Hat Magazine) Posted Apr 17, 2008 14:41 UTC (Thu) by scripter (subscriber, #2654) [Link] Here's a trick I've used when upgrading (from memory): Download the DVD iso image to my /home partition. Burn the first install CD, boot from it, and at the boot prompt, use "linux askmethod". Choose to install from hard drive. Give it the path to where the DVD iso resides. Since Anaconda pulls the ISO from the /home partition, it will refuse to modify that partition, even if I make a mistake in my partitioning choices. Another benefit is that installing from an ISO image is much faster than installing from CD or DVD.
Works-for-me Posted Apr 16, 2008 14:36 UTC (Wed) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link] Sorry about your experience, but I've done lots of Fedora upgrades, and they worked for me (no /home erasures).I also like Fedora. Ubuntu is a good competitor, but I believe Fedora is FAR more secure at this time. In particular, Fedora bakes-in a lot of countermeasures to combat unknown vulnerabilities, like SELinux with targeted policies and a long list of buffer overflow countermeasures. Hopefully Ubuntu will adopt more of Fedora's security mechanisms for countering unknown vulnerabilities, just as Fedora is adopting some Ubuntu components like Upstart. I really like the pre-upgrade approach to be in Fedora 9! It enables easy network updates (getting rid of the "create media" step), yet I think it's a much safer way to do major changes to the system compared to Debian-based systems (because you're not running the system while making the radical change). At least technically it looks like the best of all worlds. (If it works well, other distros could easily copy it.) Vive le competition!
Works-for-me Posted Apr 16, 2008 21:09 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] I prefer live updating. Among other things it helps us people use the testing distribution and upgrade it daily, so breakage gets quickly detected. Actually I have seen a few regressions, but it has been years since the last broken package for me, and this is using the testing distro.Maybe it is not so safe as updating from a live CD, and maybe this might make a nice alternative option for updating Debian stable.
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 16, 2008 10:33 UTC (Wed) by dulles (guest, #45450) [Link] RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS More feel-good hype from Redhat. I've filed several bug reports on how yum and the "Redhat Network" is broken. It appears they were not read by engineering. A few months ago, I cancelled my Redhat subscription and switched to Kubuntu. So far, I'm impressed. The Adept Manager actually works with zero dependency errors (try that Redhat). With Kubuntu, I've saved many hours of "install hell" I'm used to as a Linux user. Thanks to Linus Torvalds, Linux was never designed to easily install apps. OK, enough feel-good Linux.
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 16, 2008 11:45 UTC (Wed) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] The phrase "more feel-good hype" suggests there's well known hype coming from RH. Maybe I haven't been paying enough attention? I can't comment on RHEL or Fedora, but (K)Ubuntu works fine for me. I have used many distros over the years, including Mandrake and SuSE (Red Hat derivatives) and have never experienced dependency issues, or "install hell". And, by the way, installing software has nothing to do with the kernel, and thus Linus Torvalds is out of the question. Nice trolling, though.
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 17, 2008 7:38 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link] Wait - Alan, had you not publicly given up on anything Red Hat forever and ever back in October last year? http://www.redhatmagazine.com/2007/09/20/the-next-horizon-how-red-hat-used-yum-to-overcome-rpm-dependency-hell/#comment-24140
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 17, 2008 7:41 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link] Sorry dgm, replied to the wrong comment. Bad nerd, no jelly-baby.
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 16, 2008 11:50 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] "Thanks to Linus Torvalds, Linux was never designed to easily install apps." Um, what does Linus have to with installation of apps? Answer: pretty much nothing.
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 16, 2008 12:23 UTC (Wed) by jwboyer (subscriber, #23296) [Link] So... it's worth pointing out that this article has nothing to do with RHEL, or RHN. It was explicitly talking about preupgrade in Fedora.
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 16, 2008 17:45 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] A user identifying himself as "dulles" posted this identical off-topic message as a comment on the Red Hat Magazine article. It's off-topic because RHEL is not Fedora, and "Red Hat Network" is not mentioned in the article.
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 17, 2008 16:57 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] Ah, the Ditchwater family... gotta love them.
RHEL 5 IS A BROKEN MESS Posted Apr 18, 2008 2:36 UTC (Fri) by quotemstr (subscriber, #45331) [Link] *shrug* We use CentOS 5* at work. Besides the annoying but not fatal ata_piix hang in the 5.0 kernel, everything is just fine. * you try convincing work to pay for support.
ext3->ext4 migration Posted Apr 16, 2008 15:09 UTC (Wed) by sandeen (subscriber, #42852) [Link] Actually, ext3->ext4 migration in anaconda got pulled towards the end, due to details of how anaconda does filesystem migrations at the moment...
MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS Posted Apr 16, 2008 19:12 UTC (Wed) by dulles (guest, #45450) [Link] MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS The replies to my simple comments about yum and the "Redhat Network" show just how clueless most Linux users are. By definition, an OS is a managed system. Apparently, Linus Torvalds never learned to manage his Linux OS. The "install hell" all Linux users experience is just one symptom of his lack of design from day one. OK, I'll stop there, because I know most Linux users are "PHP for Dummies" quality engineers. :)
MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS Posted Apr 16, 2008 19:15 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] "Stop here" is the best thing you've said so far. If you don't respect LWN's readership then so be it, but please respect our desire to not have this kind of trolling on this site.
MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS Posted Apr 16, 2008 20:33 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] I dunno, if the trolling remains *this* obvious, there's not much danger that it'll get much response.
FIX_IT_YOU_MORONS (apropos) Posted Apr 17, 2008 7:55 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link] http://www.downloadhelper.net/support-kb-thread.php?threa... ... OK, I'll stop now.
FIX_IT_YOU_MORONS (apropos) Posted Apr 17, 2008 11:49 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] Damn, this dude seems to be having some "issues"...
FIX_IT_YOU_MORONS (apropos) Posted Apr 17, 2008 19:40 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Gods, yes. I mean, what's the first thing you think of when you think of free software? Unresponsive bureaucratic monstrosity without any feedback mechanisms at all, of course! Quite different from the infinitely-responsive world of proprietary software, where an intermittent bug seen by one person can lead to the primary developers of that project dropping everything for a week to track it down... ... oh, wait.
MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS Posted Apr 17, 2008 16:58 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link] Sure you don't want to add the "ignore user" facility I keep harping on about? ;)
Ignore user Posted Apr 17, 2008 18:28 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Yes, I do want to add that facility. It's just a matter of some programming, and, especially, a stronger server which can do more individualized processing. We're working on it...
MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS Posted Apr 17, 2008 6:15 UTC (Thu) by motk (subscriber, #51120) [Link] Hey, it's the Time Cube Guy! Hi there! /Godless Hell Bastard
MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS Posted Apr 17, 2008 7:06 UTC (Thu) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link] Like I asked before: Why do you keep on bringing Linus in to this discussion? Your beef seems to be with "Linux OS". Fedora is a Linux OS. Ubuntu is a Linux OS. Gentoo is a Linux OS. Slackware is a Linux OS. Are you saying that Linus created each and every one of those OS'ës? Here's a reality-check for you: Linus Torvalds created the Linux-kernel, Other people (and companies) then created operating-systems around that kernel. And those OS'es use different means of installing software. How those OS'es handle that task has NOTHING at all to do with Linus Torvalds. Linus and the software he created is not responsible for handling software-installations. So you have problems with Red Hat Network. Complain to Red Hat then. Linus Torvalds has nothing to do with Red Hat Network. His domain is the kernel, and the kernel does not concern itself with installation and removal of applications. If you want to continue this discussion, my advice to you is that you educate yourself on the subject-matter. Then we might be able to proceed. But as things are right now, you comments just reeks of flamebait and ignorance.
MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS Posted Apr 17, 2008 17:01 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]
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MORE CLUELESS LINUX USERS Posted Apr 17, 2008 19:53 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] Oh, I hadn't seen that piece of ASCII-art in much too long. (I've long wondered what the creature in it is meant to *be*, though. A troll? An elephant? A toothy sign-monster?)
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