Upgrade from F9 to F11 using preupgrade-cli

[TheMadIndian]

Hi all, I went to upgrade my daughters machine that was running F9 using preupgrade-cli after having issues with mirrors timing out it finally completed the first part with the notification install will start once you reboot. so I rebooted the machine and when it rebooted the grub menu came up with the F9 install selected but with an option for the F11 Upgrade I choose the upgrade and it starts and I see the installation screen with the stop watch and all of a sudden the comp restarts now at the grub menu again and there is no option for F11 upgrade so I boot into F9 try to run it again and it throws a bunch of errors about the rpm database... Encountering this before i run

rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db*
rpm -vv --rebuilddb
yum clean all

but yum just blows errors now and if I run rpm -qa it returns nothing. Is there any recovering from this? or should I back up the home dirs and do a fresh install?

this is the output of the rebuild

D: rebuilding database /var/lib/rpm into /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.2367
D: creating directory /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.2367
D: opening old database with dbapi 3
D: opening  db environment /var/lib/rpm/Packages create:cdb:mpool
D: opening  db index       /var/lib/rpm/Packages rdonly mode=0x0
D: locked   db index       /var/lib/rpm/Packages
D: opening new database with dbapi 3
D: opening  db environment /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.2367/Packages create:mpool
D: opening  db index       /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.2367/Packages create mode=0x42
D: closed   db index       /var/lib/rpm/Packages
D: closed   db environment /var/lib/rpm/Packages
D: closed   db index       /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.2367/Packages
D: closed   db environment /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.2367/Packages
D: removing directory /var/lib/rpmrebuilddb.2367
D: May free Score board((nil))

this is the error for yum clean all after the rebuild completes successfully

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, refresh-packagekit
rpmdb: PANIC: fatal region error detected; run recovery
error: db4 error(-30977) from dbenv->open: DB_RUNRECOVERY: Fatal error, run database recovery
error: cannot open Packages index using db3 -  (-30977)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/yum", line 29, in <module>
    yummain.user_main(sys.argv[1:], exit_code=True)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 229, in user_main
    errcode = main(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/yummain.py", line 84, in main
    base.getOptionsConfig(args)
  File "/usr/share/yum-cli/cli.py", line 184, in getOptionsConfig
    enabled_plugins=self.optparser._splitArg(opts.enableplugins))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/__init__.py", line 192, in _getConfig
    self._conf = config.readMainConfig(startupconf)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 774, in readMainConfig
    yumvars['releasever'] = _getsysver(startupconf.installroot, startupconf.distroverpkg)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/yum/config.py", line 844, in _getsysver
    idx = ts.dbMatch('provides', distroverpkg)
TypeError: rpmdb open failed

[DavidMcCann]

As you've probably guessed by now, the upgrade option is for moving from one version to its immediate successor, and not for a later one. For the situation you're now in, I'd recommend a re-installation. Trying to clean up the mess will take a lot of work and you can never be sure that there are no loose ends to unravel at a later date. Do you have a separate /home partition? If not, now's the time to make one.

[rexbinary]

Originally Posted by DavidMcCann

As you've probably guessed by now, the upgrade option is for moving from one version to its immediate successor, and not for a later one.

Incorrect.

PreUpgrade allows for upgrading from as far back as Fedora 8 directly to any version above. It works like upgrading with DVD media except you download the files rather then burning a disc.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PreUpgrade

With that said, nothing beats having /home on it's own partition and doing clean installs of the system in my opinion.

[jpollard]

Doesn't work when the update database changes format.

And that is what happens between Fedora 10 and Fedora 11.

You can't upgrade from Fedora 9 directly to Fedora 11.

Your best bet is to make a backup of user files, passwd entries, and shadow entries; then do a fresh install.

[TheMadIndian]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone I'll be doing the fresh install, I dont have a separate home partition but I can always use rsync to back it up for now to an external usb and start fresh