CentOS - Jun 2007 - how to upgrade Centos 5 correctly?

Hi,

 I've just turned from Fedora Core to Centos 5, And
would like to know the 'official' way/mechanism to
upgrade a bunch of Centos 5 machines.

 My basic situation is: hundred of machines will be
installed with Centos 5.0 by means of kickstart. and
then the machines will always uses Centos 5.0
kickstart images for initial installation, not Centos
5.1, Centos 5.2, etc. 

 So my questions are: 

1, If the above possible? Since I take lot effort to
have hacked Centos 5.0 images to make it work for my
mixed environment, and I don't like to do the same
work every three months.

2, Based on Centos 5.0 initial installation, can I
upgrade the Centos 5.0 machines to Centos 5.1 level,
5.2 level, and so on, by means of continuous online
upgrade but not reinstallation, right?

3, For continuous online upgrade, which repositories
should I download and keep updated daily? If the
extras/ and updates/ are enough? Or I have to download
addons/ centosplus/ fasttrack/ as well, or even isoes/
and os/?

4, I've changed file /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo
to use only os/ and updates/ repositories. and when it
is needed, I manually pull packages from other Centos
5 repositories. Is this the 'official' way? or not? I
mean, should I better include repositories like
'centosplus/'?

Thanks a lot, sorry for too many questions as I am a
newbie to Centos.







       
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Robinson Tiemuqinke spake the following on 6/6/2007 5:37
PM:
> Hi,
> 
>  I've just turned from Fedora Core to Centos 5, And
> would like to know the 'official' way/mechanism to
> upgrade a bunch of Centos 5 machines.
> 
>  My basic situation is: hundred of machines will be
> installed with Centos 5.0 by means of kickstart. and
> then the machines will always uses Centos 5.0
> kickstart images for initial installation, not Centos
> 5.1, Centos 5.2, etc. 
> 
Since you will be installing hundreds of machines, a local copy of the repo is
beneficial. Since you want to stay with the 5.0 install disks, the update list
will just grow over time as you install new machines in the
future.
>  So my questions are: 
> 
> 1, If the above possible? Since I take lot effort to
> have hacked Centos 5.0 images to make it work for my
> mixed environment, and I don't like to do the same
> work every three months.
If you are installing by kickstart, you only need the boot images, and you
point to your own install directories. You could use FTP HTTP or even NFS.
That way, you will not have the large amount of updates to every future
install after they are built.
> 
> 2, Based on Centos 5.0 initial installation, can I
> upgrade the Centos 5.0 machines to Centos 5.1 level,
> 5.2 level, and so on, by means of continuous online
> upgrade but not reinstallation, right?
You can just have a yum -y upgrade in %post-install of your kickstart, or hack
it into the firstboot scripts. You will want to also add your repo mods into
the kickstart also.
> 
> 3, For continuous online upgrade, which repositories
> should I download and keep updated daily? If the
> extras/ and updates/ are enough? Or I have to download
> addons/ centosplus/ fasttrack/ as well, or even isoes/
You only would want to mirror the extra repos above if you use them. If you
don't install anything from centosplus or addons, you don't need to
mirror it.
And fasttrack stuff might not actually make it into the next
release.
> and os/?
> 
> 4, I've changed file /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo
> to use only os/ and updates/ repositories. and when it
> is needed, I manually pull packages from other Centos
> 5 repositories. Is this the 'official' way? or not? I
> mean, should I better include repositories like
> 'centosplus/'?
As above. If you are not going to install from centosplus, then don't bother
mirroring it. And if you really want something from centosplus on a box or
two, you can either put them back to standard updates, or add an outside link
to the centosplus directory. You would want to use the protect-base add on for
anything in plus anyway .
> 
> Thanks a lot, sorry for too many questions as I am a
> newbie to Centos.
> 
For a newbie, you seem to be jumping in with both feet!
Welcome to CentOS!
 I don't have enough machines yet to set all this up yet, but here's to
the
future!


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Robinson Tiemuqinke wrote:
>  My basic situation is: hundred of machines will be
> installed with Centos 5.0 by means of kickstart. and
> then the machines will always uses Centos 5.0
> kickstart images for initial installation, not Centos
> 5.1, Centos 5.2, etc. 
This should work.

As I understand it, as long as you have the latest packages, 
you have "5.1" or "5.2", regardless of what kickstart image 
you started with.

So, what I do is rsync (from one of the mirrors to my local 
repo) these directories:
centos/5/os/i386/
centos/5/updates/i386/
centos/5/os/x86_64/
centos/5/updates/x86_64/

Then, when I do a kickstart, it points to my local repo 
above. So, the instant I'm done installing a machine, it 
will always be at the latest release for all packages and 
the OS.

(And then, of course, use a cron job to continually keep the 
machine updated.)

johnn

Robinson Tiemuqinke spake the following on 6/6/2007 5:37
PM:
> Hi,
> 
>  I've just turned from Fedora Core to Centos 5, And
> would like to know the 'official' way/mechanism to
> upgrade a bunch of Centos 5 machines.
> 
>  My basic situation is: hundred of machines will be
> installed with Centos 5.0 by means of kickstart. and
> then the machines will always uses Centos 5.0
> kickstart images for initial installation, not Centos
> 5.1, Centos 5.2, etc. 
> 
>  So my questions are: 
> 
> 1, If the above possible? Since I take lot effort to
> have hacked Centos 5.0 images to make it work for my
> mixed environment, and I don't like to do the same
> work every three months.
> 
> 2, Based on Centos 5.0 initial installation, can I
> upgrade the Centos 5.0 machines to Centos 5.1 level,
> 5.2 level, and so on, by means of continuous online
> upgrade but not reinstallation, right?
> 
> 3, For continuous online upgrade, which repositories
> should I download and keep updated daily? If the
> extras/ and updates/ are enough? Or I have to download
> addons/ centosplus/ fasttrack/ as well, or even isoes/
> and os/?
> 
> 4, I've changed file /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo
> to use only os/ and updates/ repositories. and when it
> is needed, I manually pull packages from other Centos
> 5 repositories. Is this the 'official' way? or not? I
> mean, should I better include repositories like
> 'centosplus/'?
> 
> Thanks a lot, sorry for too many questions as I am a
> newbie to Centos.
> 
This is even better;
http://www.centos.org/modules/tinycontent/index.php?id=22


-- 

MailScanner is like deodorant...
You hope everybody uses it, and
you notice quickly if they don't!!!!