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Posted Nov 03, 2008 at 6:32:17 PM
Subject: Making an old distro, new!!
I got a very (what I would call, absurd) request. To take an old instance of Red Hat 7.3 and make it "new", without simply installing a new release of the OS (what would now be something like Fedora Core) and installing the needed software on it. I have been trying to figure out how to best approach this. I know, in theory, it's possible. But where do you start? Should I compile the core utils and a new kernel like you do in Linux From Scratch and try to copy new binaries over to the old OS? AFIAK, newer libraries are going to cause incompatibilities with older applications that may simply do a 'if(version != dependency) { exit ERROR; }', whether or not the new library should technically work. I would really like to see if someone has had experience with this. But, perhaps for good reason, there's not a whole lot in the HOWTO realm. :) - Any thoughts, tips, or advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
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Khabi
Joined Apr 21, 2008
Posts: 121
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Posted:
Nov 03, 2008 8:37:04 PM
I would not suggest trying this by hand. Its a tricky beast, ESPECIALLY with RPM based distros. You're more likely to break it horribly, then to get it right.
Lots of changes to config files, layouts, and such change over the course of 6 years. Truthfully, your best bet is to list all the rpms installed, backup key directories (/etc/, /home/, whatever else you have files in) and just install anew.
Some distro are based more on a meta system, where this wouldn't be a problem (Gentoo for example). Red Hat is not one of them :)
But I digress.
If you got alot of apps on that box that are compiled from source, you're going to make things harder.
So, your options. List out all the RPMs installed on the system (can't remember the syntax, I don't use an rpm based distro), and try to find compatible rpms from the fedora project (if thats what you want), and upgrade them.
Recompile everything from source:
Start with the toolchains, gcc, glibc, etc. Then move on to everything else.
Either way, its going to take *ALOT* of time to get the system running correctly again. Most likely however, you're not going to get all the bugs worked out ever. :)
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