How to Upgrade
LTS 3.0.x to the latest 3.0.x
via yum

Updated May 25, 2005

All steps must be done as root

Scientific Linux Fermi was designed so that an administrator can easily upgrade their computer between minor releases.
It is not required that administrators upgrade their release, because the security errata will be updated for all releases. But there are often features and/or packages included in later releases that were not available with the earlier releases.
Below is the steps, to change to the latest release.
These instructions are for updating between minor releases, such as from 3.0.1 to 3.0.3. Changes between major releases, such as LTS 3.0.2 to 4.1, or 7.3.1 to LTS 3.0.x may have more problems and are not discussed here.

Special Steps
Some steps will have one or more of the following markings.
301 : For systems that are upgrading FROM LTS 3.0.1.
303+ : For systems that are upgrading from LTS 3.0.3 or greater, but not to be done if LTS 3.0.1.
AFS : For systems that currently have openafs installed.
Optional : This step may be skipped if wanted.
IMPORTANT : This step is very important.

For the impatient

  1. rpm -Uvh ftp://linux.fnal.gov/linux/lts30x/i386/sites/Fermi/misc/RPMS/yum-conf-30x.LTS.noarch.rpm
  2. yum update yum
  3. yum upgrade

For the more cautious

  1. Make sure you have done your backup's.
    I haven't heard of anyone needing them, but don't you be the first.
  2. IMPORTANT Make sure you have enough disk space. In particular, make sure you have enough space in /var/cache, which is where yum downloads the rpm's to.
  3. Optional yum update
    This will get your system up to date with the latest packages. It will also make the last step smaller. If you want, you really can skip this step.
  4. yum clean all
    This cleans up all the rpm's that you just downloaded, clearning up your disk space.
  5. rpm -Uvh ftp://linux.fnal.gov/linux/lts30x/i386/sites/Fermi/misc/RPMS/yum-conf-30x.LTS.noarch.rpm
    This will install the latest yum.conf for your system. If you customized your yum.cron, or your yum.cron.excludes files, these will not be touched. So you may want to redo them.
  6. yum -d1 update yum
    You should always get latest yum.
  7. 301 yum install Fermi-release and then rpm -e redhat-release
    303+yum update Fermi-release
    Do this first so that your login says the right thing.
  8. yum upgrade
    Note that this is a yum upgrade and not a yum update. If there is any package that 'obsoletes' another package, it will get installed and remove the obsoleted package. An example of that would be xmms-mp3 obsoletes xmms-mpg123.
  9. IMPORTANT Check your grub and/or lilo settings. Although yum usually get's things right when it updates kernels, it is always a good idea to give the grub and/or lilo config files a check.
  10. 301 AFS yum install openafs-thiscell
    Since LTS 303 and greater is using the OpenAFS from Scientific Linux, it no longer has the fnal.gov cell built into the rpms. So you have to install openafs-thiscell-FNAL to get your thiscell set to fnal.gov. Optional yum install SL_afs_no_dynroot
    The newer openafs has the function dynroot (dynamic root) on by default. This allows things like laptops to bootup withouth a network and still use AFS when the network is plugged in. The downside is that the directory /afs/fnal/ is not available, only /afs/fnal.gov/. If your machine has scripts, or user accounts, that use /afs/fnal/ then you will want to install this rpm.
  11. 301 Upgrade all the packages that might have changed arch.
    1. Edit /etc/yum.conf and change
      exactarch=1
      to
      exactarch=0
    2. yum upgrade
      This will update all the packages that changed arch's, such as from i386 to noarch
    3. Re-edit /etc/yum.conf and change
      exactarch=0
      to
      exactarch=1
      Because you don't want some to accidentally change (like glibc)
  12. yum clean all
    This cleans up all the rpm's that you just downloaded, clearning up your disk space.
  13. /bin/reboot
    Reboot into your new kernel and Scientific Linux Fermi release