To Experience Fedora Upgrade (v0.1.1.3)

There are 3 possible ways to upgrade to a newer Fedora release.
a. Using PreUpgrade [TESTED YET]
resources:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/PreUpgrade
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Interviews/PreUpgrade

STEPS to upgrade Fedora 10 (current release) to Fedora 11 (RAWHIDE):
1. install preupgrade package with the following command
$ su -c ‘yum install preupgrade’
2. run preupgrade as root
$ su -c ‘preupgrade’
3. on “Upgrade your system” window, choose “Rawhide” as desired release
4. wait for preupgrade “preparing system upgrade”
We can continue using our system while preupgrade is “preparing system upgrade”.
Below are what actually preupgrade does when it prepares system upgrade.
* download release information
* download installer images
* determine which packages to download
* download packages
I also noticed that preupgrade created /var/cache/yum/preupgrade/ directory to store the packages it downloaded. It also  created /boot/grub/preupgrade/ directory to store ramdisk image, kernel and installer image.
* prepare and test upgrade
Preupgrade actually modifies /boot/grub/grub.conf to create boot stanza in preparing to boot into installation mode

5. reboot the system as required by preupgrade
SPECIAL NOTE:
When I rebooted the system I got “waiting for hardware to initialize…” message displayed on the screen.
I waited about 5 minutes or more then the system showed me blue screen with garbage characters.
I FAILED to upgrade Fedora 10 to Fedora 11.
I still find no solution to work out this problem.

Eventually, I succeeded in upgrading Fedora 10 to Fedora 11 (currently rawhide/development branch) after doing the 4th attempt (Feb 12th, 2009) of executing preupgrade. I believe the problem I encountered got fixed on my 4th attempt of executing preupgrade. This is due to the nature of rawhide that progresses rapidly (in daily basis) so that my problem also got fixed quickly.

6. just wait for preupgrade continuing installing packages it downloads before and finishing upgrade process (including modifiy /boot/grub/grub.conf and remove /boot/grub/preupgrade/ and /var/cache/yum/preupgrade/ directory).

It took about an hour to install 818 packages (that initially I had more than 1300 packages installed on my F10 machine)

TO DO : using preupgrade to upgrade F11 (that was upgraded from F10 before) to F12 (rawhide) when F11 is released.

b. Using traditional anaconda upgrade (the regular installation DVD)
resource(s):
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DistributionUpgrades

c. Using yum (live upgrade)
resource(s):
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq

List of software that should be installed on my rawhide machine:
* Dial up program                : wvdial, which helps me stay connected to internet
(using my Huawei E220 Mobile Broadband USB Modem) when NetworkManager is broken
* Desktop Environment            : LXDE
* Web browser                    : gaelon (size 3.5 M) or firefox (size 14 M)
* Email client                   : evolution (12 M) or thunderbird (23 M) or mutt (1.6 M)
* IRC client                     : xchat (3.3 M) or irssi (2.3 M) or epic (2.1 M)
* Web browser, email, IRC client : seamonkey (16 M)
* Softphone                      : ekiga (14 M) or skype
* Yahoo Messenger client         : pidgin (2.5 M) or empathy (1 M)
* Movie player                   : mplayer (9 M) or vlc (4.9 M)
* Office tools                   : openoffice.org-calc and openoffice.org-writer

~ by yunustj on February 7, 2009.