Re: [gentoo-server] Challenging Update Question

[William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>]

The other way around - update the toolchain first.  That is gcc,
binutils, glibc, ...

When this is all working do a emerge world -ep to make sure everything
is up to date for 2.4 (Dont forget the expat upgrade gotchas - read the
guide!)  Use revdep-rebuild liberally!

Then do the kernel and reboot

Then bring up anything that was held back by 2.4.

It will actually be the toolchain (and probably expat) that will cause
the most grief!  Stay with a 3.x series gcc until the end - there are
upgrade guides if you want a 4 series, but wait.

I did this some time back on a large system (~1000 packages) and it does
work - and the system can stay online for almost all of it as well.  If
you have a relatively small system, it is much easier and quicker as
there are far fewer complications.

BillK

On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 05:00 -0700, Collin Starkweather wrote:
> Quoting "W.Kenworthy" <billk@iinet.net.au>:
> 
> > Rebuild/upgrade on the redundant drive in a chroot
> > Rebuild elsewhere (local to you) on similar hardware and copy OS over.
> > I suspect though, that building a new system, getting it working and
> > shipping it as a black box would be the most low risk/effective
> > strategy.
> >
> > Hint:
> > Setup grub to boot either os so local support only has to select which
> > disk to boot from if there is a failure.
> 
> Thanks for the advice.
> 
> This may seem a novice question, but can you build a 2.6 kernel and  
> use it to boot a system built against 2.4?  That is, to divide the  
> move into two testable components, kernel and everything else,
> 
> 1) Build a full new system on the redundant drive with a 2.6 kernel
> 2) Copy *just* the kernel over and test it (with a menu in grub as you  
> suggest in case it barfs)
> 3) If the kernel works, then move the rest over
> 
> Or does the kernel change enough between major iterations that you'd  
> have to, say, rebuild glibc or somesuch?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -Collin
> 
> -- 
> Collin Starkweather, Ph.D.
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/collinstarkweather
> 
-- 
William Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>
Home in Perth!
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