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This page last modified: Jan 20 2010
keywords:yum,upgrade,update,fedora,10,11,2009,no,disk,anaconda,net,network,
description:Upgrade from Fedora 10 to Fedora 11 via yum and a network update.
title:Upgrading Fedora versions using yum and rpm and preupgrade

I have just upgraded from Fedora 11 to Fedora 12 via preupgrade. This
is an easy process when everything works. Sadly, several things did
not work. 

1) The Nvidia Quatro FX 500/FX 600 is not supported in the new Nvidia
drivers. Use the 173xx drivers instead. You must remove the new
drivers before installing the "old" driver.

This is the relevant message in /var/log/messages:

Jan 19 16:28:27 tull kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA Quadro FX 500/FX 600 GPU installed in this system is
Jan 19 16:28:27 tull kernel: NVRM:  supported through the NVIDIA 173.14.xx Legacy drivers. Please
Jan 19 16:28:27 tull kernel: NVRM:  visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
Jan 19 16:28:27 tull kernel: NVRM:  information.  The 190.53 NVIDIA driver will ignore
Jan 19 16:28:27 tull kernel: NVRM:  this GPU.  Continuing probe...
Jan 19 16:28:27 tull kernel: NVRM: No NVIDIA graphics adapter found!
Jan 19 16:29:47 tull kernel: NVRM: The NVIDIA Quadro FX 500/FX 600 GPU installed in this system is
Jan 19 16:29:47 tull kernel: NVRM:  supported through the NVIDIA 173.14.xx Legacy drivers. Please
Jan 19 16:29:47 tull kernel: NVRM:  visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html for more
Jan 19 16:29:47 tull kernel: NVRM:  information.  The 190.53 NVIDIA driver will ignore
Jan 19 16:29:47 tull kernel: NVRM:  this GPU.  Continuing probe...
Jan 19 16:29:47 tull kernel: NVRM: No NVIDIA graphics adapter found!


There were no warnings or comments in on-screen documents. If you have
an older Nvidia card and things aren't working, you need to check
/var/log/messages since the "GPU not supported" message will not be in
/var/log/Xorg.0.log

2) The rpmfusion repository had to be removed and reinstalled and even
now it won't use the mirror. The workaround is to manually edit each
rpmfusion .repo files in /etc/yum.redos.d and uncomment the baseurl
and comment out the mirror.

3) You should probably remove nouveau from your system. It might be a
good idea to remove the nvidia drivers too.

4) With Fedora 12 it is difficult to keep nouveau from being installed
by modprobe. This is extremely irritating and pointless. Somewhere
early after udev is started, modprobe runs and will install the
nouveau module. You must prevent this if you want to use the nvidia
drivers (nouveau and nv are open source drivers, but as far as I can
tell, they have limited features, hardly work, and certainly do not
support dual-head two monitor systems from a single video card).

Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst (carefully, if you mess it up your computer
won't boot). Add "rdblacklist=nouveau vga=0x318  nouveau.modeset=0" to the end of any relevant "kernel" lines:

kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31.9-174.fc12.i686 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol02 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 KEYTABLE=us rdblacklist=nouveau vga=0x318  nouveau.modeset=0

I also ran this command (which looks dangerous). I don't know if this
really worked (or helped) because I was trying all sorts of things.

dracut -f /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

5) If you run nvidia-settings and get the message "you aren't using an
nvidia driver" or something like that, check your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
file to verify that the driver really is nvidia. With no xorg.conf,
startx will simply create some kind of config and try to run. However,
the default is to use nv or nouveau without asking, and this default
can create problems.

6) As always when diagnosing X windows startup problems, you can edit
/etc/inittab to change the default runlevel to 3. You'll get a console
login prompt. Login as root. Run commands like nvidia-xconfig and
startx. If you started X windows via startx, X windows will shutdown
when you log out of the graphical desktop.

These are the instructions I used (aside from the extra couple of
hours I spent fixing things):

http://www.howtoforge.com/how-to-upgrade-from-fedora-11-to-fedora-12-desktop-and-server

This is what I ran to install the rpmfusion repo:

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

These notes may be relevant:

http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/719/upgrade-to-fedora-12-from-fedora-11/



# Below are my notes from a Fedora 10 to Fedora 11 upgrade via
# yum. The format is more or less a commented session transcript. 

# I followed these instructions:

# http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq

# Upgrading Fedora 10 to Fedora 11 via yum works with few
# issues. However, only experienced sysadmins should attempt this
# process. Minor problems and issues will arise during the
# upgrade. This upgrade process saves formatting a disk
# partition. However, the process is time consuming. It may be even
# slower than a normal Fedora installer-based upgrade. For example, I
# seem to recall that the "yum update rpm\* yum\*" updated (roughly)
# 350 packages. The "yum upgrade" upgraded around 1200 packages.

# You must have 1.5 to 2.0 GB (or more?) free disk space.

# Close all applications. Open a non-X-Windows shell console. You'll
# do the upgrade from a non-windowing character based console
# shell. To get back to the graphical desktop (assuming you are still
# at runlevel 5) do ctl-alt-F1. Login as root.

ctl-alt-F2

# You are now logged in as root in a console terminal
# session. X-Windows is not running. Change to runlevel 3 so that X
# windows is stopped.

telinit 3

# Copy important stuff we may want later. I like to have copies of old
# config files.

tar -cvf /home/snapshot/root.tar ./root
tar -cvf /home/snapshot/etc.tar ./etc

# Stop postgres, and keep it from trying to start after we reboot.

/etc/init.d/postgresql stop
chkconfig postgresql off

# Stop other daemons that we will manually restart later.

/etc/init.d/httpd stop
/etc/init.d/cups stop
/etc/init.d/webmin stop

package-cleanup --leaves
package-cleanup --orphan
yum clean all

# Change to the new (Fedora 11) repository.
# The fedora project page suggests a URL with a * but rpm relies on
# curl, and curl didn't understand that fedora-release*.noarch.rpm
# meant fedora-release-11-1.noarch.rpm. Manually get the URL from a
# web browser, wget the file, run rpm on the downloaded file.

wget ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/11/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-11-1.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh fedora-release-11-1.noarch.rpm

# Update rpm and yum simultaneously. Do not stop this process in a
# partially completed state. If this process fails due to running out
# of disk space, yum will be in a proper state. The incomplete
# transaction will be ok. YMMV. It is best to have plenty of free disk
# space before starting.

yum update rpm\* yum\*

# Clean up some stuff that may (or actually did) cause problems with
# dependencies. Some of this I cleaned because I needed a little more
# disk space for the big upgrade below. It might be best to erase
# everything before starting the updates/upgrade.

yum erase trash
yum erase openoffice.org\*
yum erase postgresql
yum erase firefox
yum erase thunderbird

# If your update of rpm\* and yum\* failed, you should have enough
# disk, and if yum has told you that you have a pending transaction,
# you could complete that transaction now. Ideally, you erase stuff to
# create enough free disk space before starting the upgrade process.

# If you don't have a pending transaction, skip this step.

yum-complete-transaction

yum erase ntpdate
yum erase unique unique-devel
yum erase eclipse-changelog eclipse-svnkit svnkit
yum erase mplayer
yum erase kmod-nvidia\*
yum erase numactl

# Run the big upgrade.

yum upgrade
yum groupupdate Base

# grub-install. I confirmed the device from the output of mount.

/sbin/grub-install /dev/sda1
cd /etc/rc.d/init.d/; for f in *; do /sbin/chkconfig $f resetpriorities; done

# I see "pae" in the output of cat /proc/cpuinfo, so based on fedora
# project recommendations, I'm switching to the PAE kernel.


emacs /etc/sysconfig/kernel
yum install kernel-PAE

# Finally, reinstall the nonfree nVidia driver. Luckily, I had a list
# of previously installed rpm packages. There is also /var/log/yum.log
# which lists what was installed and erased. kmod-nvidia-173xx was
# erased, so I replace it with the new, PAE version. If you are
# running X and forget to reinstall some X-Windows related drivers,
# you can stop X by changing to runlevel 3 with "telinit 3". Install
# the new stuff. I often use "startx" to temporarily start X-Windows
# as a test. You can start X by changing your runlevel to 5 with
# "telinit 5". Having reinstalled the nVidia driver, my X-Windows
# (KDE) desktop works just like it used to. I have a dual-head monitor
# with a single desktop spread across both monitors.

yum -y install kmod-nvidia-173xx-PAE


# Restart.

shutdown -r now


# With a little luck, your computer comes up with your graphical
# desktop (or whatever) just like before you started the upgrade. From
# this point on, I worked in Konsole.


# Reinstall thunderbird. Firefox was reinstalled during the
# upgrade. Fedora (stupidly) enables the pc speaker. It was beeping
# every time I backspaced in Konsole. Very, very irritating. Disable
# it.

yum -y install thunderbird
modprobe -r pcspkr
echo "install pcspkr :" >> /etc/modprobe.conf
cat /etc/modprobe.conf
yum -y  install ntpdate