268 lines
13 KiB
HTML
268 lines
13 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
|
|
<HTML>
|
|
<HEAD>
|
|
<TITLE>Adventure of Upgrading to Redhat 4.0 -- issue 12</TITLE>
|
|
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Mozilla/3.0Gold (X11; I; Linux 2.0.19 i686) [Netscape]">
|
|
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="upgrade linux redhat ">
|
|
</HEAD>
|
|
<BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#FF0000" ALINK="#FF0000">
|
|
|
|
<H4>
|
|
"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>
|
|
"</H4>
|
|
|
|
<P> <HR> <P>
|
|
<!--=================================================================-->
|
|
|
|
<H1 ALIGN=CENTER>The Adventure of Upgrading to Redhat 4.0</H1>
|
|
|
|
<H1 ALIGN=CENTER>(with advice for others)</H1>
|
|
|
|
<center><H4>By Randy Appleton, <A HREF="mailto:randy@EUCLID.ACS.nmu.edu">
|
|
randy@EUCLID.ACS.nmu.edu</A> </H4></center>
|
|
|
|
<P> <HR> <P>
|
|
|
|
<P>Here at <A HREF="http://www.nmu.edu">Northern Michigan University,</A>
|
|
we run a Linux lab with 14 workstations. Upgrading from Redhat 3.0 to Redhat
|
|
4.0 has been quite an adventure. This article describes the upgrading of
|
|
one workstation.</P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>Time</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>The first thing to do when upgrading is to free up a significant block
|
|
of time. We used a day and a night to upgrade one machine. That included
|
|
downloading the software, making floppy disks, and fixing our errors along
|
|
the way. In fact, if you're a busy person, and Redhat 3.0 is working fine
|
|
for you, then you might choose to delay the upgrade, or even avoid it.
|
|
However, at the <A HREF="http://euclid.nmu.edu">Linux Lab at Northern Michigan</A>,
|
|
we try and stay near the cutting edge, so the upgrade was a must for us.</P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>Method</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>The next step is to decide your upgrade method. The choices are the
|
|
same ones from Redhat 3.0:</P>
|
|
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>Upgrade from an NFS mounted directory of files.</LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>Upgrade from a CD-ROM disk.</LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>Upgrade from a spare partition containing the needed files.</LI>
|
|
|
|
<LI>Upgrade directly from an FTP site.</LI>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
|
|
<P>The quickest and easiest way is to use the CD-ROM drive. This is the
|
|
only way if you don't have a direct Internet connection, since you cannot
|
|
download the necessary amount of data through a modem in any reasonable
|
|
amount of time Since our workstations don't have CD-ROM drives, and do
|
|
have an excellent Internet connection, we chose to do an FTP install.</P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>Download Boot Disks</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>Before an FTP install can begin, two disks named <A HREF="ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/current/i386/images/boot.img">boot.img</A>
|
|
and <A HREF="ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/current/i386/images/supp.img">supp.img</A>
|
|
must be downloaded from <A HREF="ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/current/i386/images/">ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/current/i386/images/</A>
|
|
. They can be written to the floppy disks with the commands</P>
|
|
|
|
<PRE>dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0 <B>(switch disks)
|
|
</B>dd if=supp.img of=/dev/fd0</PRE>
|
|
|
|
<P>The second disk is only needed for an FTP install. Redhat 3.0 required
|
|
three disks for all install types, so this change makes a significant savings
|
|
in user effort. However, we had used the Redhat 3.0 disks as emergency
|
|
boot disks to correct problems like forgetting the root password (yes,
|
|
this does happen). The Redhat 4.0 boot disks are missing several important
|
|
utilities (i.e. tar and vi) so cannot be used for this purpose. </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>Also, notice that these two disks work for any supported hardware configuration.
|
|
The older Redhat 3.0 required that the user search through a list of boot
|
|
disks for the correct choice based on his hardware. This search often took
|
|
more time than the download itself. Redhat 4.0 is much improved in this
|
|
regard (our favorite new feature).</P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>Bootup and Hardware Configuration</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>The first thing you'll see after inserting the boot.img disk and rebooting
|
|
the computer is a LILO prompt. Just the words:</P>
|
|
|
|
<PRE>boot:</PRE>
|
|
|
|
<P>We would have liked more explanation of our choices here. Redhat 3.0
|
|
offered a very nice menu of help text that explained the possible parameters
|
|
and their effects. However, if you just wait in a perplexed fashion long
|
|
enough, the system will become impatient and boot Linux for you.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>The first difference you'll notice is that Redhat 4.0 prompts you to
|
|
describe your hardware. It asks about SCSI controllers and network adapters,
|
|
showing you a list of possible choices. Behind the scenes the Redhat 4.0
|
|
install script loads kernel modules to access your hardware. </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>While this is happening is a good time to switch to virtual console
|
|
#3 (press <ALT>F3). This console shows what's happening in more technical
|
|
detail, describing things like the mounting and unmounting of file systems,
|
|
and the downloading of files. The older Redhat 3.0 did not have this feature,
|
|
which we often use to debug problems. You can switch back to the main action
|
|
by pressing <ALT>F1.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>The install scripts also query the user for network information. You
|
|
should know your IP number, netmask, gateway, hostname, domain name, and
|
|
name server before starting the install. We notice that Redhat 4.0 creates
|
|
a default gateway and name server entry based upon your IP number and netmask,
|
|
but that these defaults are rarely right. Better in our opinion would be
|
|
to have no default at all than a misleading one.</P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>Choosing your Software</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>Redhat 4.0 will show you a menu of possible software upgrades and additions.
|
|
This list is essentially the same as Redhat 3.0, except that most packages
|
|
have increased in version number.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>The biggest problem we had involved the remote login software (rlogin,
|
|
in.rlogind, in.rshd and in.telnetd). These have been upgraded to use the
|
|
P.A.M. library and kerberos. However, we often login into our Linux workstations
|
|
from older Sun Sparcs that do not run this software suite. For some unexplained
|
|
reason, the SunOS clients could not access the Linux servers. We solved
|
|
the problem by simply re-installing the older software. </P>
|
|
|
|
<P>In general, we suggest letting Redhat upgrade everything you might ever
|
|
use. You should avoid downloading any software you are sure you will not
|
|
need. Avoiding unneeded software will decreases the total time needed and
|
|
the probability of network errors during the download.</P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>The Long Long Download</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>Step one of the download process is to pick an FTP site. There are many
|
|
listed <A HREF="ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/MIRRORS.html">here</A>. We started
|
|
by choosing a site with a fast 'ping time' from us, since ping time is
|
|
a reasonable approximation of FTP throughput and is quite quick to
|
|
gather. To find out the ping tome to a site like www.redhat.com, just type:</P>
|
|
|
|
<PRE>ping www.redhat.com</PRE>
|
|
|
|
<P>After ping runs for several packets, kill it with <CNTL>C. The
|
|
average ping time will be shown at the bottom. We saw ping times from 80
|
|
- 300 milliseconds. Downloads are four times faster from the best site
|
|
compared to the worst. It is well worth your time to explore sing ping
|
|
before picking a site at random. The fastest was the aptly named
|
|
<A HREF="ftp://ftp.real-time.com/pub/redhat">
|
|
ftp://ftp.real-time.com/pub/redhat</A>
|
|
. Unfortunately, they were not accepting FTP connections, so we used
|
|
<A HREF="ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/linux/distributions/redhat">
|
|
ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/linux/distributions/redhat</A>.
|
|
We could FTP to that site, but the download failed. It seems that the
|
|
download scripts also want to know the version and architecture of the packages
|
|
you are trying to download. Therefore, the correct URL is
|
|
<A HREF="ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/linux/distributions/redhat/current">
|
|
ftp://uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu/pub/systems/linux/distributions/redhat/current/i386.</A>
|
|
That was not obvious from the directions. We suggest that the Redhat folks
|
|
either change their script to add these subdirectories or make their directions
|
|
more clear.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>For us, upgrading required downloading over 300 megabytes. I must say
|
|
the status screen during the download is quite nice. The biggest problem
|
|
with it is that it does not show the progress of downloading each package.
|
|
Since the download was so long, we left it running overnight. Unfortunately,
|
|
it failed on the download of <B>LILO.</B> The download script then waited
|
|
for us to press a key acknowledging the error, which meant it stopped downloading
|
|
some time during the night. Better would be to continue downloading while
|
|
informing the user of this error.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>Once the download is finished, and you answer a few simple questions,
|
|
you get to reboot your computer into Redhat 4.0 (yea!!). </P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>The Upgraded System</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>The first thing we noticed is that the kernel has been upgraded to Linux
|
|
2.0.19. Some problems we had before, like our tape drive not working, were
|
|
fixed with this upgrade. Also, our Adaptec 2740 SCSI controller was accessible
|
|
for the first time. Java support is included in the upgraded kernel.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>We discovered the auto-mounter daemon (amd) was running, and had created
|
|
a directory named <B>/proc. </B>Inside <B>/proc</B> is every computer mountable
|
|
by your workstation. For example, <B>/proc/foo</B> is the root directory
|
|
of the host foo, assuming foo will allow outside access. Nice feature!!</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>The <B>ps</B> command has been changed. Formerly, we used '<B>ps -augx</B>'
|
|
to see all processes on our system. That command will no longer work. The
|
|
new equivalent is '<B>ps -ax</B>'.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>The <B>passwd</B> command has been changed. In fact, my former password
|
|
is now considered ill advised, and I've had to pick a new password.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>The window manager <B>fvwm95</B> has been included in the upgraded Redhat.
|
|
Surprisingly, <B>workman</B>, the musical CD player, was not. See <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/linux-info/pkglist/rh40_i386/all-packages.html">http://www.redhat.com/linux-info/pkglist/rh40_i386/all-packages.html</A>
|
|
for the complete list.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>Happily, the Redhat 4.0 upgrade left much of our custom configuration
|
|
intact. For example, we run a custom X server that Redhat left in place,
|
|
and our NFS mounts as described in <B>/etc/fstab</B> were retained, even
|
|
though the upgrade did change <B>/etc/fstab</B> to add other entries (like
|
|
the <B>/net </B>file system). We did have to re-edit <B>/etc/rc.d/rc.local</B>
|
|
to set our NIS domain.</P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>The Errata and Other Upgrades</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>The errata can be found at <A HREF="http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/rhl/rh40-errata-general.html">http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/rhl/rh40-errata-general.html</A>
|
|
. It is actually quite long. Basically, the errata is a list of package
|
|
upgrades to Redhat 4.0, along with a description of applicability. We counted
|
|
up to 40 packages to download and install, depending on your configuration.
|
|
That just too many!! Why does not Redhat make these improved packages a
|
|
part of the latest redhat release, possibly called Redhat 4.0.1?</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>Luckily, the process is quite mechanical, and requires little thought.
|
|
Just download the needed files, and run <B>rpm -U </B>on them.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>Netscape has upgraded since we did our original install. Unfortunately,
|
|
Redhat does not include Netscape, so Netscape must be updated separately.
|
|
Perhaps there are legal reasons Redhat does not include Netscape, but Redhat
|
|
does include other non-free software, such as <B>xv</B>.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P>During the upgrade, the install scripts creates backup copies of certain
|
|
files in <B>/etc/rc.d/rc*.d</B> with the extension ".rpmsave".
|
|
Once everything is set up correctly, you can delete any files in <B>/etc/rc.d/rc*.d/*.rpmsave</B>.</P>
|
|
|
|
<H1>The Finished Product</H1>
|
|
|
|
<P>Overall, the Redhat package is well done. The installation is easier
|
|
for Redhat than any other Unix we know of. Redhat 4.0 is a collection of
|
|
small upgrades of many packages from Redhat 3.0. There are only a few new
|
|
packages (i.e.: <B>fvwm95</B>, <B>TheNextLevel)</B>. Overall, our system
|
|
is much as it was before, but with many small improvements. Unless you
|
|
have some need to upgrade, or just feel like messing around with your system,
|
|
we suggest the results may not be worth the effort. Even so, we like Redhat
|
|
4.0 very much.</P>
|
|
|
|
<P> <HR> <P>
|
|
|
|
<H3 ALIGN=CENTER>Hot Links</H3>
|
|
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI><A HREF="http://www.redhat.com">The Redhat home page</A><BR>
|
|
<LI><A HREF="http://euclid.nmu.edu/~randy">The author</A><BR>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
|
|
<P> <HR> <P>
|
|
|
|
<P>If you have comments or suggestions, email me at <I><A HREF="mailto:randy@euclid.nmu.edu">randy@euclid.nmu.edu</A></I>
|
|
</P>
|
|
|
|
<!--===================================================================-->
|
|
<P> <hr> <P>
|
|
<center><H5>Copyright © 1996, Randy Appleton <BR>
|
|
Published in Issue 12 of the Linux Gazette</H5></center>
|
|
|
|
<!--===================================================================-->
|
|
<P> <hr> <P>
|
|
<A HREF="./index.html"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM SRC="../gx/indexnew.gif"
|
|
ALT="[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]"></A>
|
|
<A HREF="../index.html"><IMG ALIGN=BOTTOM SRC="../gx/homenew.gif"
|
|
ALT="[ FRONT PAGE ]"></A>
|
|
<A HREF="./lg_bytes12.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/back2.gif"
|
|
ALT=" Back "></A>
|
|
<A HREF="tcsh.html"><IMG SRC="../gx/fwd.gif" ALT=" Next "></A>
|
|
<P> <hr> <P>
|
|
</BODY>
|
|
</HTML>
|