I hate Red Hat

March 7, 2005 8:44 PM

The Fedora Core 3 installation crashes on my Red Hat 9 PC, and posting to Bugzilla has yielded zero results. Is there any way to get my system up to date without upgrading?

At this point all of my libraries are so out of date that I can't install anything without spending hours fighting with recursive dependencies, and even then it's even odds whether the thing will ever actually work. I've heard of apt-get being used with Red Hat, and apt-get sounds like manna from heaven right now ... would it work in this situation? Or is there any other Linux distro which can 'upgrade' from a Red Hat install without losing everything I've got on the disk? (I have much too much crap to be able to realistically back it up anywhere, and I've got lots of other crap with lengthy hand-edited configuration files strewn about the system which I really don't want to have to recreate.)

posted by IshmaelGraves to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

FC2 and FC3 crashed on me as well, I think it was a motherboard issue (best I could figure was something related to USB) with the 2.6 series kernels. So I've stayed with a 2.4 series for now. Best of luck to you, but I'd say what you're trying to do sounds pretty difficult unless you're willing to back your stuff up and transfer it to another distribution. There's not really any way to "upgrade" between distributions as far as I know.

I jumped to Debian after I couldn't upgrade to FC2 or 3, but that doesn't seem like an easy option for you. If I were you, I'd start combing through the computer and making notes about what you've manually changed and would need to back up, just in case you need to switch in the future.

if you want to try apt-get upgrading you can get apt from here. I've heard of people upgrading entire distributions using apt, but I've never tried it so I'm not sure how it works, to be honest.
posted by jnthnjng at 9:51 PM on March 7, 2005

Did the FC3 disks pass the self-check that runs at the beginning of the install? If not, redownload and burn new ones.

Perhaps the install can't go straight from RH9 to FC3. Maybe try going to FC1, then FC3. I've done that (FC1->FC3 successfully.
posted by achmorrison at 6:22 AM on March 8, 2005

Response by poster: achmorrison, yes, they did pass. And the documentation claims that you should be able to upgrade directly, and the installer (before it crashes) detects the RH9 installation and offers to upgrade.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 6:58 AM on March 8, 2005

Did you try backing up your files to a different system, deleting all partitions in rescue mode, and installing FC3 clean?

That's what I would try.
posted by azazello at 8:32 AM on March 8, 2005

If that doesn't help, try running the installer in text mode (it should be available at the CD bootloader prompt). If it still crashes, the installer probably has a problem with your hardware and you need to remove the hardware it has trouble with or try a different installer.
posted by azazello at 8:34 AM on March 8, 2005

Response by poster: I have nowhere to back up the many gigabytes of data I would rather not lose.

I'm pretty certain it's a hardware issue, but as it is a laptop and I can't really switch any of the hardware around, that doesn't help, which is why I'm looking for ways to get my system more-or-less up to date without a full upgrade.
posted by IshmaelGraves at 10:08 AM on March 8, 2005

I have had some success with buying a new smallish hard drive, installing fresh to that, and then deleting everything except /home from the old drive. This solution can be yours for the low price of under $50, and works wonders. Also, please switch to a Debian based distro, like Ubuntu. Apt is an improvement even on RH, but does not reach its full potential unless it is used with packages that were intended for it in the first place. With Ubuntu, etc, you will never have to do another full reinstall unless you feel like it. I do every year or so, when I buy a new drive or some such.
posted by wzcx at 2:23 PM on March 8, 2005

I forgot to add, read "Why Linux? Why Debian?" (please google for link, sorry)
posted by wzcx at 2:25 PM on March 8, 2005