[vox-tech] upgrading Mandrake packages only

[Ken Herron]

--On Tuesday, January 13, 2004 12:44:00 -0500 "Aaron A. King" 
<king@tiem.utk.edu> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm running Mandrake 9.1 on a few computers.  Being security-minded, I
> try to  keep up with software security updates conscientiously.  This
> is fairly easy  using Mandrake's RPM-based update tools (urpmi and
> gurmpi).
>
> The problem is, Mandrake has already released 9.2 and will eventually
> stop  updating the 9.1 mirrors.  In the past, when this has happened, I
> have done a  clean install.  This is inevitably a very painful process.
> It can take up to  a week of tinkering before I get all my machines
> working again according to  my preferences.  Trying to upgrade from the
> ISOs usually doesn't work well,  in my experience.
>
> So I'm considering trying to update packages only.  It seems I can
> fairly  easily tell urpmi to look at the 9.2 mirror instead of the 9.1.
> Presumably,  I would then be able to upgrade all individual RPM
> packages and keep up with  updates.

As it happens, I upgraded my home system from mandrake 9.0 to 9.2 this 
weekend. I just booted off the first CD and told it to upgrade my system. 
I didn't do a perfect job, so afterwards I spent a few hours manually 
removing old RPMs and installing additional packages, but it was pretty 
straightforward work.

I ran the command:

	rpm -q -a --queryformat '%{NAME}\t%{INSTALLTIME:day}\n'

which lists every installed RPM along with its install date, then 
inspected everything that was "old". Some of them were packages I'd 
independently installed, others were leftovers that hadn't been upgraded 
properly. For example, my old system had automake 1.6 installed; the new 
OS supplies automake 1.7, but it's not marked as replacing 1.6 so rpm 
thought the two packages conflicted. Similarly, it installed the latest 
copy of apache 1.3.x (along with addons like mod_perl) instead of 
replacing it with apache 2.x and its addons.

-- 
"Grand Funk Railroad paved the way for Jefferson Airplane, which cleared
the way for Jefferson Starship. The stage was now set for the Alan Parsons
Project, which I believe was some sort of hovercraft." - Homer Simpson

Kenneth Herron        Kherron@newsguy.com       916-366-7338