F5 to F9 upgrade and new hardware

[cranium]

Hi All,

I have several questions about my linux machine. I don't know too much, so be kind :)

1. I want to put some new hardware in my computer: motherboard, memory, and a video card. Via some local storms on Monday my motherboard is fried and I thought I would update my 512mb RAM and GeForce 5200 video card. Currently I am running F5 and I was wondering how this upgrade of hardware will be "accepted" by Fedora. I am use to Windows and how it automatically finds new hardware. In this case I am upgrading some important components and wondering what I need to know in order to make this process run smoothly.

2. I have downloaded the F9 ISO and want to upgrade from F5 to F9 on the same box, once the hardware has been added (I have no other option but to at least add the motherboard), I want to upgrade to F9. Never done this before (updating Linux) and want to know if this is possible and how it might effect saved files, installed applications, web server, etc?

Thank you for your time and help,
cranium

[dancuc]

Hi cranium,

1) I had a Fedora on my old computer - 2,08 AMD proccessor, 512 MB RAM, Geforce 4200Ti 64-MB and reserved 40GB on my HDD for the filesystem and 1GB for swap. It's working, if you don't use compiz and beryl etc...
Now I have 3200+ Dual AMD proccessor, 4GB of RAM, Palit Geforce 8600GT 256MB RAM and 500GB of HDD. I can run all I want on Fedora, even compiz and beryl together, without any problems. But I must tell you, with 4GB of your RAM only first 3,0 GB will be recognized with basic installation.

2) I cannot tell you, I didn't upgrade from 5 to 9, only from 8 to 9 . From 8 to 9 - no problem, but I don't know what will happen if you jump from these versions. Anyway, try it, but do not forget to backup your data!!

[stefan1975]

Hi,

my experiences with upgrading are not very good, nor are basically totally changing nearly all hardware in a running system, it nearly always fails here or there, at least that is my experience.

Besides if you want to upgrade your fedora system it would be a long road, as far as I know you will have to do 4 upgrades 5->6->7->8->9, there is no upgrade path from 5->9 and versions 5,6,7 are not even supported anymore.

i am not even sure if your (gnome) settings are even compatible with an upgrade that big

Maybe a clean install would better, if you have a seperate /home partition you could save your files and configs or make a backup of those on a usb stick or something.

maybe this helps:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq


Although upgrades with yum have been tested and work, live upgrades are not recommended by the Fedora Project. If you are not prepared to resolve issues on your own if things break, you should probably use the recommend installation methods instead. With a typical installation, this method usually works well, but it can break third-party packages not available in the Fedora repositories. Please search the mailing list archives first if you run into problems.


stefan

[Wayne]

Stefan is totally right here. Upgrading even through one version can have it's problems, a quick look through the forums will tell you that. It's probably the reason why the devs don't recommend it :) Also bear in mind that there were lots of changes around the F7 mark, including the way the kernel saw drives and partitions (HD0 > SD0) F9 has also seen a lot of new stuff! It all boils down to what your time is worth... a couple of hours installing all your stuff or days sorting out the mess :)

Wayne

[cranium]

Thank you all for your input. I will backup and install 9 from the start.

On another note: installed the motherboard and new ram last night without really any problems. The video card is a whole another ball of wax: I had to switch to the on-board video to have it boot. When I tried to use the video card I bought it went haywire and went to a screen with a lot of text and was doing a count down from 120 - did this about 3 times and went back to the on-board video. Maybe a clean install of v9 will stop that :D

[stefan1975]

Thank you all for your input. I will backup and install 9 from the start.

On another note: installed the motherboard and new ram last night without really any problems. The video card is a whole another ball of wax: I had to switch to the on-board video to have it boot. When I tried to use the video card I bought it went haywire and went to a screen with a lot of text and was doing a count down from 120 - did this about 3 times and went back to the on-board video. Maybe a clean install of v9 will stop that :D

probably a driver issue that you current FC5 install is missing a driver for your new videocard and the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file which has all your X settings is still using the driver for the onboard video card.

Depending on your new videocard you might want to install a new (binary / 3d) driver after you F9 install. The default install should work fine using either a free ati/nvidia driver but won't give you 3d. This can be done through adding the livna repository and installing the apropriate video driver. if it is an intel card you should be all set though.

rpm.livna.org

stefan

[cranium]

Depending on your new videocard you might want to install a new (binary / 3d) driver after you F9 install. The default install should work fine using either a free ati/nvidia driver but won't give you 3d. This can be done through adding the livna repository and installing the apropriate video driver.
Sorry to sound ignorant but are you just saying to go to the vidoecards site and grab a new driver? What is livna? What do I need from it? How do I get it? Etc?

Thank you for your continued help.

[stefan1975]

no. do NOT download a video driver from the distributors site, that will cause issues in the long run. It would help knowing what kind of videocard you bought but what you should do is this, and i am guessing here it is a nvidia card again:

1) install F9 from dvd / livecd it should work fine with the new videocard using a generic / free driver
2) when it is totally done update the system all the way, so you have all the latest stuff and the latest kernel
3) reboot
4) livna is a 3rd party repository containing non-free applications and drivers, like nvidia drivers
add livna repository by downloading and installing this file: http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm
5) install video driver. assuming it is nvidia this would be:


$ su -c "yum install kmod-nvidia"


6) configure videocard drivers by starting the application "livna-config-display", the defaults *should* work fine if your card is quoite new

7) reboot

done (well video wise that is).

if you plan on installing more non-default stuff or desktop applications (google stuff) you could also try Dangermouse's setup script that automates a lot of these steps like installing the livna repository, installing the video driver and has options for a lot of extra apps (java, flash, plugins, codecs, etc)

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=171660&highlight=install+script

stefan

[cranium]

2) when it is totally done update the system all the way, so you have all the latest stuff and the latest kernel
Okay I follow everything but above. How do I update the entire system? Never done that before. Once again, thank your your patience.

[dancuc]

It's simple. Your system is usually updated when you login as a normal user. Then you'll get a pop-up window, and you just select Update. Or you can do it from a terminal, by executing command:
yum update

[stefan1975]

It's simple. Your system is usually updated when you login as a normal user. Then you'll get a pop-up window, and you just select Update. Or you can do it from a terminal, by executing command:
yum update

or more precise


$ su -c "yum update"

[cranium]

Thanks! I will be working on it next week so I am sure I will be back w/ more questions then ;)