From RedHat 9 to Fedora Core 4
OK, for some reasons, I decided to switch to Fedora Core 4 from RedHat 9. Do not ask me why, maybe the day was very very rainy. :)
If you are about to do the same thing, i.e. upgrade from RedHat 9 to Fedora Core 4, I hope the following points are helpful:
1. The recommended way to upgrade/install
Please go to Fedora's mirror site in the UK, www.mirror.ac.uk/mirror/fedora.redhat.com, download iso files into your hard drive (and remember where they are, so that you know which "hda" and its path). You can also burn them into CDs, at least burn the first ISO file as I found it is quite useful to keep a rescue CD (you can also use the rescue CD iso…).
2. yum & yum.conf
You may have heard that you can use yum to upgrade from RedHat 9 to Fedora Core 4 by modifying etc/yum.conf, so you do not need to download the huge ISO files. However, DO NOT FOLLOW THIS. First of all, there are a lot of RPMs to download and install, compared with time used in Q1 above, it took longer to finish. Secondly, only follow this yum way if you are confident to debug and fix Linux. You could be in a position to fix everything (I did). Finally, you would also need to clean and clear for a while to optimise the box. If these points are ok with you, do not forget to use a mirror instead of *.us or *.redhat.com.
3. A Dual-Boot System
The main advtange of a Dual-Boot system (i.e. two OS like Windows XP and Linux installed in a computer) is increased reliability. If one fails, you can turn to the other. I had been keeping a single Windows system for quite a few years until XP crashed due to a strange bug created by someone @ microsoft (and I was in middle of my undergraduate dissertation). While upgrading from RedHat 9 to Fedora Core 4, I cannot switch on the network interface. So I used the other OS, XP, to access Internet for downloading and information.
4. Warwick FTP service
If you are on campus, you may want to visit Warwick FTP site. There are some linux resources and files required to build a linux box.
ftp://ftp.warwick.ac.uk/pub/linux
04 Oct 2005 23:35
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Tags: Fedora Linux Redhat
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On campus, the Centre for Scientific Computing's Fedora mirror should be even quicker. The CSC mirror quite a few distros, which is very handy.
I tried upgrading RH9 to Fedora Core 1 back a couple of years ago, using apt. I seem to recall that it broke… Later I switched to Debian, which has seemed more reliable. Funnily enough, we don't have any Fedora/Red Hat users in the LUG - we're not sure why, as DCS seem to like it. :)
05 Oct 2005, 02:03
Great, another mirror is here at Warwick. I have not search over CSC's resources yet, which seems to contain a lot.
Thank you for adding that. You can also do via "apt", but I would suggest others to get a clean install instead of "upgrading". Regarding why to install RedHat/Fedora, do not ask me, as I do not know either. :)
05 Oct 2005, 11:49
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