Greetings all, I recently did a yum upgrade from FC3->FC4 (FC4 gets rid of a ton of little annoyances that I had in FC3, BTW! Good work!) I know that this is not an "officially supported" upgrade path but it is a good way to test the integrity of dependencies and it did work ... eventually.
I tried to be smart about it and update just yum first after installing the fedora-release with a "yum update yum" (which consequently brings in all the new yum dependencies and the packages that rely on those, &c, &c.) This made sense to me since a new updater should handle the rest of the upgrade better than the old one ... or so I thought. Apparently I was too smart for my own good.
Due to a dependency problem, a new libxml2 didn't get pulled in, a required python module didn't get loaded and yum wouldn't run anymore. It wasn't until that moment that I realized how much I had grown to depend on yum's excellent dependency resolution. It is kind of a PITA to track down what I needed manually. But I did (with the help of google and a previous bugzilla entry guiding me to run the yummain python script directly to get the debug info directly rather than it getting gobbled up in the wrapper. Forcing the new libxml2 in did the trick and a simple "yum upgrade" did the trick after that.
Ironically enough, had I just left well enough alone and did a simple "yum update" to get everything at once, everything would have worked out fine.
All of that to ask the following ... Is it worth it for me to track down the exact place where this dependency problem occurs and give details in a bugzilla report? Or is it going to be met with a "This method of upgrading is not supported ... use anaconda next time, you crazy git! ->RESOLVED(Luser error)"? Is {the ability to cleanly yum between releases} and {the yum upgrade path be "officially supported"} future goals for the Fedora Project?
/Mike
Hi
All of that to ask the following ... Is it worth it for me to track down the exact place where this dependency problem occurs and give details in a bugzilla report? Or is it going to be met with a "This method of upgrading is not supported ... use anaconda next time, you crazy git! ->RESOLVED(Luser error)"? Is {the ability to cleanly yum between releases} and {the yum upgrade path be "officially supported"} future goals for the Fedora Project?
/Mike
I hope you have read this http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq. If the upgrade exposes genuine bugs in the packages these can be filed regardless of the supportability of the method that you have followed
regards Rahul
On 9/6/05, Michael Wiktowy mwiktowy@gmx.net wrote:
Due to a dependency problem, a new libxml2 didn't get pulled in, a required python module didn't get loaded and yum wouldn't run anymore.
How you proceed depends on the the exact errors issues which are being raised in the attempt. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq seems to work for people with clean fc3 systems moving to fc4... but you could have it a corner case or something. It doesn't sound like your followed this procedure so I'm not sure what to suggest for recovery.
-jef
Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On 9/6/05, Michael Wiktowy mwiktowy@gmx.net wrote:
Due to a dependency problem, a new libxml2 didn't get pulled in, a required python module didn't get loaded and yum wouldn't run anymore.
How you proceed depends on the the exact errors issues which are being raised in the attempt. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq seems to work for people with clean fc3 systems moving to fc4... but you could have it a corner case or something. It doesn't sound like your followed this procedure so I'm not sure what to suggest for recovery.
-jef
You misunderstood the intent of my original message ...
I have fixed my problem already.
I used that page you quoted as a reference right from the start (and would love to be able to edit that page to add my warning to the Problems section. If I could get edit status my username is MichaelWiktowy) and it was very helpful. However, I tried to get too smart about it, went off-script and (in addition to the suggested updating of the kernel separately first) I updated the updater separately first. That borked yum.
What I am asking is if it is worth it for me to take the time to gather all the proper version info, track down the exact dependency and file a bug in bugzilla eventhough that upgrade path is unsupported (presumably meaning that no bugs showing up using that method will be fixed)?
I guess what my question boils down to is: Can I upgrade my system piece by piece with yum to test the integrity of the dependencies or is that kind of dependency robustness an unreasonable/unsupported goal for Fedora? I am soliciting some opinions as to whether this problem (which is admittedly a corner case which would be rarely encountered using yum and never encountered using anaconda but a valid problem IMHO) is worth putting in bugzilla or am I just wasting everyone's time.
This is a separate issue from /etc/ config changes that are handled by anaconda. I understand that those are not/cannot be handled by yum. My problem was definitely a package dependency issue.
The details of my problem (an solution) for anyone who has read this far: - Start with an up to date FC3 - install the FC4 fedora-release package - yum update yum (this is the off-script part which at the time I thought would be a good idea) - yum won't yum no more - download and force the FC4 libxml2 package to install (rpm will complain about other packages needing the older libxml2 unless you --force) - this is the step where I would have to do some hunting to find out the the package that wrongly didn't include this dependency to the new libxml2 - yum will yum now and you can update the rest as one big blob
My ideal would be for yum + rpm to have an extra degree of fail safety and *always* work; no matter what upgrade path is chosen.
/Mike
On 9/6/05, Michael Wiktowy mwiktowy@gmx.net wrote:
What I am asking is if it is worth it for me to take the time to gather all the proper version info, track down the exact dependency and file a bug in bugzilla eventhough that upgrade path is unsupported (presumably meaning that no bugs showing up using that method will be fixed)?
No your specific issue about yum no longer working becuase you did things in the wrong order is not bugzilla worthy. In fact that very issue should have been addressed in the evolving package building process for python packages. I won't get too deep into the technical details, but I will give you a hint. python in FC4 introduced a new requires "python(abi) = 2.4" for python modules to require. You'll notice that both yum and libxml2-python in FC4 require "python(abi) = 2.4" I'll let you slueth out exactly why the jump from python2.3 in FC3 to python2.4 in FC4 necessitated this addition.
Also since this problem only occurs becuase you went off-script... I doubt its worth adding to the wikipage. Anyone following the wikipage instructions as written will not see this specific problem.
My ideal would be for yum + rpm to have an extra degree of fail safety and *always* work; no matter what upgrade path is chosen.
Bugs are bugs.... packaging bugs happen too. The specific issue with regard to python that you ran into should be taken care of in fc4+. But feel free to keep dreaming the impossible dream... fighting that unbeatable foe...bearing that unbearable sorrow...running where the brave dare not go...righting the unrightable wrong...and all that jazz.
-jef"man of la mancha"spaleta
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Jef Spaleta -
Michael Wiktowy -
Rahul Sundaram