Topic: YUM failure or how to list installed packages?

[rwbowers]

I tried searching for this but didn't find any relevant posts.

I have SME Server 6.0.1-01. I want to upgrade to 7.1. The documentation says to uninstall all packages that are not part of the original CD.

So I want to find what packages I added (the server has been quietly running for years, and I forget what I've installed).

I tried RPM but can't find a list function
I then tried "yum list" but found the pathname in /etc/yum.conf was incorrect (it must have changed) so I updated the path to what I THOUGHT was current. I get the following results:

[root@ponyexpress USA]# yum list
Gathering package information from servers
Getting headers from: SME Server 6.0.1 os
Error getting file http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/releases/6.0.1/os/e-smith/RPMS/headers/header.info
[Errno 6] ERROR: Url Return no Content-Length  - something is wrong



The only thing I changed was the host from mirror.contribs.org to wiki.contribs.org.

How do I find which packages I need to uninstall in order to upgrade my 6.0.1-01 to 7.1?

Alternatively, I could/should install a new server, but I'll need to copy my users and email over. It says to do a backup, but what does the backup actually save?


~Rick

[raem]

rwbowers

> I have SME Server 6.0.1-01. I want to upgrade to 7.1.
> I tried searching for this but didn't find any relevant posts.

It depends what you searched on.

Here is the most relevant post with oodles of information about upgrading
It is 5 pages long so make sure you read all the posts, have a look at the information around pages 4 & 5, ie the restore from hard disk method
You will save yourself a lot of problems by carefully absorbing everything that is said in this post.
Look at dmay's post on page 4 which very succinctly outlines the steps rquired.

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=30745.0

Here's another that may be useful, there are more too if you search.

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=36272.0

Also see (a rehash of the above posts)
http://wiki.contribs.org/SME_Server:Documentation:HowTo:UpgradeDisk



> How do I find which packages I need to uninstall in order to
> upgrade my 6.0.1-01 to 7.1?

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=32381.0


That version of sme6 was highly customised using a script (and not a supported release) and unless you do regress your installation to the original set of rpms (and remove non standard templates and custom templates & custom user templates) you will have serious problems after the upgrade to sme7.

You may like to consider starting with a fresh install of sme7.x and manually copying ibay & user & email data & reconfiguring users etc & reinstalling add on apps, although this will still involve time & effort, it may be less complicated than doing an upgrade from your heavily modified system.

A fresh install of sme7 may be preferable, if you wish to use RAID1 array and not have problems with sme6's 3 partitions versus sme7's 2 partitions. I'm not sure if this issue was ever fixed in later sme7 releases.
Also there were some issues with samba machine accounts & secrets.tdb file for some users/situations that never seemed to be fully resolved, so a fresh install would avoid potential problems with that too. Search the forums on these issues for more info.

After installing or upgrading from CD to sme7.1, remember to do
yum update smeserver-yum
signal-event post-upgrade; signal-event reboot
as this will avoid another problem with yum updating from Centos repositories being out of sync with sme releases (ie kernel & ppp modules not being matched).
Then run the normal updating process to get to sme7.1.3 using the server manager software updates panel.
see
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=37466.0

Make sure you backup your system before starting and ideally make a clone image of your hard drive.

[rwbowers]

Thanks for all the input. I'll take a hard look at it all.

I'm pretty sure I will install a new server. My current server is a mere i486 266MHz with 384MB and a 20GB hard disk.  But, hey, it's been sitting in the corner running happily for about 5 years. Can't beat that...

~Rick