FC12 to FC13 upgrade woes

LionelHutz · #1 26th May 2010, 10:20 PM

Took an FC12 system to FC13 via 'preupgrade'

There was a REALLY old version of gimp-print-cups in RPM, and the installer announced "a fatal error occurred". However, everything else seemed to download properly and I allowed the upgrader to reboot the system.

a) grub boots the kernel, then the kernel can't find root and panics. It does this because it can't root file system with root=UUID= kernel option. If I manually tweek the grub line to use root=/dev/sdx, kernel finds its root and boots up to the next problem.

b) GUI environment not launched. Init scripts die on "error loading modules.dep". Sure enough - one is not there. Ran "depmod" to generate it ,and rebooted. System reboots into GUI, where I login to find the next problem.

c) Evolution won't start. Reason turns out the evolution-data-server from FC12 is still present. Did a check on just how many other FC12 RPM's are present: 1100. Yeah - over 1000. About 850 of the FC12 RPM's also had FC13 replacements installed. Did an "rpm -e" on these. Also had to do some remove action on mkinitrd, nash, plymouth-scripts-0.8.0, and parted-1.9.0 as there are replacements for these utilities under different package names. That cleaned up the system some, to present me with the next problem.

d) yum package repository still linked into FC12. Removed fedora-release-12-2.noarch and then I could "yum install" evolution and a few other packages properly.

I'm posting this in the hope that it helps someone else. I've done one other FC12->FC13 upgrade today, and that went flawlessly. So, I think in general the upgrade works fine. It just looks like if preupgrade finds anything amiss, it doesn't take care of a lot of things and generally leaves you with an unbootable mess to clean up.

Dandapani · #2 27th May 2010, 10:49 PM

Ouch. Glad you posted. I was going to try this on my main system. Guess not. Back to burning a CD and loading my spare disk and swap them. Sheesh.

dd_wizard · #3 27th May 2010, 11:02 PM

Actually, I'm pretty sure the OP said a straight yum upgrade works fine. It did for me as well. I think his problems were from using preupgrade.

dd_wizard

Dandapani · #4 27th May 2010, 11:09 PM

So a DVD upgrade might work... I thought preupgrade was the preferred method by now?

ryptyde · #5 27th May 2010, 11:23 PM

I did a "preupgrade" on a Acer Aspire 3680 laptop yesterday and all went well. Previously this lappy went from F10>F12 using "preupgrade" and now F12>F13 went even smoother. I followed all of the recommendations for a preupgrade from the Fedora wiki.

I will be running preupgrade on a desktop with a nvidia graphics card here shortly after I back up my important stuff. Maybe back here to brag/complain with the outcome later.

bjgreen · #6 14th November 2010, 05:30 PM

I had the same problem with a f12 to f13 using preupgrade. The upgrade seemed to be going well until it complained about some obscure error involving a nethack package. The installer announced a "fatal" error and asked to reboot the system. After the reboot a nice comforting "kernel panic" message appears along with a very obscure message about not being able to do something with a root fs.

I fixed the problem by downloading and burning an f14 iso and choosing the upgrade option. If I did not have a second computer handy capable of burning a DVD - I would have been in a world of hurt.

I think it is pretty crummy that preupgrade chooses to leave your system unbootable whenever it encounters obscure problems with individual packages. It seems like it chooses to abort the process in such cases. I think it should follow through and properly setup the boot loader even if an error is encountered with a package. I like the convenience of preupgrade, but will never try it again without already having a DVD iso handy.

ryptyde · #7 14th November 2010, 08:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bjgreen

I had the same problem with a f12 to f13 using preupgrade. The upgrade seemed to be going well until it complained about some obscure error involving a nethack package. The installer announced a "fatal" error and asked to reboot the system. After the reboot a nice comforting "kernel panic" message appears along with a very obscure message about not being able to do something with a root fs.

I fixed the problem by downloading and burning an f14 iso and choosing the upgrade option. If I did not have a second computer handy capable of burning a DVD - I would have been in a world of hurt.

I think it is pretty crummy that preupgrade chooses to leave your system unbootable whenever it encounters obscure problems with individual packages. It seems like it chooses to abort the process in such cases. I think it should follow through and properly setup the boot loader even if an error is encountered with a package. I like the convenience of preupgrade, but will never try it again without already having a DVD iso handy.

A lot of the "obscure error" messages will show up or the upgrade fail when 3rd party repos and/or packages
from other sources are installed. Don't know if that is your case but many others including myself have found
that it is usually the cause of the upgrade problems. Welcome to Fedora and enjoy the ride!

phil