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<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>Here's a question that probably doesn't come up
very often, but has anyone "sidegraded" from Fedora to Centos? Has anyone
changed linux distros in any other direction? Centos seems like a natural change
of distros, but I'm open to other suggestions too.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>Background: We're still running FC4 on an HP
DL380 G3. I know that's suboptimal, but we have very few opportunities to
upgrade and our window last summer was occupied with other tasks. :-(
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>LON-CAPA 2.5.3, the current version, deprecates
FC4, but 2.6, the soon-to-be-released version, does not even mention FC4, so it
looks like we want to upgrade the OS before 2.6.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>On a previous occasion, I had tried and failed to
install FC5. It turns out that FC5 (I don't know about 6, 7 or 8) does not
correctly detect or handle the hardware RAID array on these Proliant servers.
(</FONT><A
href='http://www.broadbandpig.com/archives/2006/05/fedora_core_5_o.html ">Here</a'><FONT
face=Verdana
size=2>http://www.broadbandpig.com/archives/2006/05/fedora_core_5_o.html</FONT></A><FONT
face=Verdana size=2> <SPAN
class=080230814-02012008>discusses</SPAN> that problem.<SPAN
class=080230814-02012008>)</SPAN> Of course, by the time I discovered the
problem, I had no time to track it down and fix it because the next semester was
about to begin. That left us on FC4 when FC5 was current, which was not too bad,
but it gets worse. Now the latest versions of Fedora seem to be available as a
DVD ISO, but no longer as multiple ISOs for CDs. Unfortunately the DL380 has a
CD drive, not a DVD drive. The result is that between the RAID problem and the
CD problem, I am not sure how to go about updating from FC4 to Fedora 8 (or more
likely 9 by the time we get a window of opportunity to do it). I doubt that I'm
going to get funding to replace the CD drive with a DVD drive and, personally, I
don't feel like messing about with the hardware any more than
necessary.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>I see that Centos does still come as multiple CD
ISOs and is, obviously, intended for use as an "Enterprise" platform. It also
appears to support the hardware RAID arrays of the Proliant series.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>So, the big question is what I would need to do
to "upgrade" to Centos. I would GUESS that the instructions on <A
href="http://www.lon-capa.org/fedoracoreupdate.html">http://www.lon-capa.org/fedoracoreupdate.html</A>
may be comparable to what I would need for "sidegrading" from Fedora to Centos,
but I'm not too sure. What I have done in the past for upgrading Fedora is
essentially to wipe out the OS but leave /home untouched and just reinstall the
new OS onto /, /usr and /var. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>I could go that route or pretend I was moving to
FC6 (just with Centos CDs) or ...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>I may be able to get some spare hardware for a
short time to test install FC4 and then install Centos over that, but I'm not
sure yet.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>Anybody have any good advice for me?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Verdana size=2>Thanks,<BR>Paul<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>