Upgrade F12 to F14 fails using preupgrade

[holdea]

The upgrade using yum and preupgrade fails

after reboot of the system

-> retrieve install image, ok
-> examine storage (or similar), ok
-> transfer install image to disk, ok
-> dependency check in install packages, ok
-> start installation process, ok
-> preparing to install


=> there was an error running yout transaction for the following reason(s): insufficient diskspace

you need more space on the following filesystems:

1089 M on /

unfortunately not more information displayed. only exit possible....


Any experiences with this kind of behaviour?

Many thanks for any feedback.

BR-andy

[timcoote]

I've had the same error when trying to preupgrade-cli from f11 to f13 (f11 to f12 works ok).
the issue turned out to be that there wasn't enough space to download the rpms multiple times. It's not obvious to me to spot how to nail this down, but I did note that one of the logs (visible through alt/f2, iirc) had been trying to work out how much space was needed. I initially fixated on one of the filesystems being full, but that's because it's a fixed size.

if you can clear out a gig or so of files, this should go through. (assuming that you've got a big enough /boot partition - I had to grab a spare partition that's 500MB).

An annoying feature of the failure was that it cannot be recovered from in a headless situation as the final error message comes up on the console and requires local keyboard input (!)

[cneil]

I never bother with upgrading when trying to advance more than one level. Instead of upgrading I find that re-installing gives a more reliable result.

[timcoote]

Originally Posted by cneil

I never bother with upgrading when trying to advance more than one level. Instead of upgrading I find that re-installing gives a more reliable result.

how do you do that on a headless box that you cannot get to?

doesn't an install trash all of your service configurations?

Tim

[Magickman]

The space needed is in the boot sector. Fedora configures it for 100 mb, and the upgrade wants to put it's own boot sector in there, there is not enough room. That is my take on it, having tried several times to upgrade Fedora. Best way is install the new version fresh.

[cheerio158]

Originally Posted by Magickman

The space needed is in the boot sector. Fedora configures it for 100 mb, and the upgrade wants to put it's own boot sector in there, there is not enough room. That is my take on it, having tried several times to upgrade Fedora. Best way is install the new version fresh.

I just did 2 successful upgrades (F12->F14, F13->F14) using preupgrade-cli and the trick I used to get around the limited space in /boot was:

1. Before the upgrade, remove all the old kernels except the last one using yum erase kernel-xxxx (xxxx being the kernel version and release)
2. After preupgrade-cli had downloaded all the packages and was requesting the reboot to start the upgrade, moved the /boot/initramfs-xxxx to my home directory freeing up another 13MB. (Not sure what I would have done if the upgrade failed - my plan would be to boot with a liveusb to put it back.)