On Fri, 30 Mar 2001, Konstantin (Kastus) Shchuka wrote:
I learned the hard way that the best way to upgrade is clean install.
I tried to upgrade 7.0 to 7.1. The net result is X server which does not start, yast2 does not start, a lot of packages missing files. Finally, after a lost day of work I did a clean install. My /home was on a separate partition, and I saved my /etc from 7.0 before doing clean install.
It looks like we are back to Slackware circa 1995 when a new realease of distribution meant a clean install.
This is in considerable distinction from Slackware circa 2001, where tools like autoslack and slackUp have allowed me to smoothly and almost automatically upgrade my Slack machines from 4.0 to 7.0 to 7.1 to current-as-of-yesterday (literally!) which is not-quite-7.2-yet (Slack keeps their /current directory, well, "current" --eventually they'll freeze it, call it "7.2", and start a new /current) However, like you, after a week wrestling with a SuSE 7.0 to 7.1 upgrade on one machine and encountering a variety of package, file, and daemon-related glitches, and having to symlink various libraries by hand, etc., I'm beginning to agree that the backup, wipe, and clean install approach may be the only really good solution for upgrading from SuSE 7.0 to 7.1. But if I end up having to go through the work of a clean install, it may as well be of an easier to upgrade distro like (gulp) Slack. Best wishes, --Kevin
RPM and YaST supposed upgradeability of the system. But now the difference even between the releases within one major version number appear to be too big.
-Kastus