How To Upgrade From Fedora 11 To Fedora 12 (Desktop & Server)

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Author: Falko Timme <ft [at] falkotimme [dot] com>
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Last edited 11/23/2009

This article describes how you can upgrade your Fedora 11 system to Fedora 12. The upgrade procedure works for both desktop and server installations.

I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

The commands in this article must be executed with root privileges. Open a terminal (on a Fedora 11 desktop, go to Applications > System Tools > Terminal) and log in as root, or if you log in with a regular user, type

su

to become root.

2 Upgrading To Fedora 12 (Desktop)

First we must upgrade the rpm package:

yum update rpm

Then we install the latest updates:

yum -y update

Next we clean the yum cache:

yum clean all

If you notice that a new kernel got installed during yum -y update, you should reboot the system now:

reboot

(After the reboot, log in as root again, either directly or with the help of

su

)

Now we come to the upgrade process. We can do this with preupgrade (preupgrade will also take care of your RPMFusion packages).

Install preupgrade...

yum install preupgrade

... and call it like this:

preupgrade

The preupgrade wizard will then start on your desktop. Select Fedora 12 (Constantine). Afterwards the system is being prepared for the upgrade.

At the end, click on the Reboot Now button.

During the reboot, the upgrade is being performed. This can take quite a long time, so please be patient.

Afterwards, you can log into your new Fedora 12 desktop.

3 Upgrading To Fedora 12 (Server)

First we must upgrade the rpm package:

yum update rpm

Then we install the latest updates:

yum -y update

Next we clean the yum cache:

yum clean all

If you notice that a new kernel got installed during yum -y update, you should reboot the system now:

reboot

(After the reboot, log in as root again, either directly or with the help of

su

)

Now we come to the upgrade process. We can do this with preupgrade.

Install preupgrade...

yum install preupgrade

... and call it like this:

preupgrade-cli

It will show you a list of releases that you can upgrade to. If all goes well, it should show something like Fedora 11 (Leonidas) in the list:

[root@server1 ~]# preupgrade-cli
/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/yum/__init__.py:203: UserWarning: Use .preconf instead of passing args to _getConfig
  warnings.warn('Use .preconf instead of passing args to _getConfig')
Loaded plugins: blacklist, refresh-packagekit, whiteout
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
please give a release to try to pre-upgrade to
valid entries include:
   "Fedora 12 (Constantine)"
   "Rawhide"
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root
[root@server1 ~]#

To upgrade, append the release string to the preupgrade-cli command:

preupgrade-cli "Fedora 12 (Constantine)"

Preupgrade will also take care of your RPMFusion packages, so all you have to do after preupgrade has finished is to reboot:

reboot

During the reboot, the upgrade is being performed. This can take quite a long time, so please be patient. Afterwards, you can log into your new Fedora 12 server.

4 Links

• Fedora: http://fedoraproject.org/