Bug 446846

Add 'vnc' commands to the boot commandline. See
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Anaconda/Options#vnc for details.

This is on the roadmap for preupgrade 1.1:
https://fedorahosted.org/preupgrade/ticket/21

*** Bug 459330 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hello,

No, no, no ! ;-)
Using VNC is not a solution in all cases: please don't assume that the machine from which we are connecting:

- is a Linux machine;
- has VNC installed;
- has VNC connections allowed through firewall;
- runs X.

What we really need is a way to complete the upgrade via ssh, command-line mode:
please see my original bug #459330.


Regards,
Răzvan

1) There are VNC clients available for pretty much every OS there is. And they don't require X. So that objection is nonsensical.

2) We make every possible effort to ensure that the upgrade runs automatically. Under *most* circumstances, the upgrade should be able to complete without needing the VNC connection at all, as you request in bug 459330. 

But this *cannot* be *guaranteed*. If something goes wrong, you *will* need some way to connect to the machine to fix it, and VNC is the *only* available option in this case.

In short: VNC is not *required* to complete a remote/headless upgrade, but it *is* the only way to check progress or fix errors.

*** Bug 459330 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Hello again,

Thanks *a lot* for your work, which I *truly* appreciate !

However, I think I don't understand all technical aspects:

To run preupgrade *locally* , I will enter in a terminal (opened inside an X session) and type "preupgrade". Then a *graphical* utility fires up, download packages and prepares the system for the upgrade. That allows me to use the system as as workstation while packages are downloaded.

Then comes the reboot and the *graphical* process continues until the upgrade is completed (sometimes requiring re-dowloading of corrupted packages, etc., so I will need both fully functional network access *and* acces to system's *graphical* console).


Now please suppose we are trying to acquire the same functionality from a geographically distant location, via ssh (say putty, installed on a Windows box). Worse, the Linux machine we are trying to upgrade is to small to run X and/or a VNC server - it runs in default runlevel 3 and stays there.

Is there any posibility to perform the upgrade using command-line tools *only* ?

(To be honest, I've upgraded a few machines via ssh by simply:

- installing the next version's fedora-release RPM package manually
- run yum upgrade

but I suspect this is not a clean way of doing things, since packages in different releases do not overlap exactly. Anaconda woud do better...).

Thanks again,
Răzvan

Yes, you can run preupgrade remotely and with command-line tools only:

1) ssh in
2) install 'preupgrade' (0.9.9 or later)
3) run preupgrade-cli --vnc=[password]
4) reboot remote machine
5) (optional) connect a VNC client to the remote machine (port 5901)
6) wait for system to finish and reboot

And that's it. The VNC server only runs while the upgrade is in progress; it allows you to remotely monitor the progress of the upgrade. Under normal circumstances the upgrade should complete without requiring you to connect to the VNC server at all.

preupgrade-0.9.9-1.fc9 has been pushed to the Fedora 9 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update preupgrade'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F9/FEDORA-2008-8576

preupgrade-0.9.9-1.fc8 has been pushed to the Fedora 8 testing repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
 If you want to test the update, you can install it with 
 su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update preupgrade'.  You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F8/FEDORA-2008-8545

Hello,


Regarding comment #7 :

Thank you for your recipe-like response, which is much needed in a *visible* place in the documentation !

Still one more question for clarification:

On a *stock* Fedora machine (with unmodified configuration), the VNC system works out of the box ? Are there any adaptations necessary, such as VNC server manual (pre)configuration, setting VNC passwords or opening ports on the *local* default firewall  (system-config-firewall) ?

If yes, how can we syncronize these packages and document all process, to make things as automatic as possible for non-technical users or low-level maintenance personnel ?


Regards,
Răzvan

preupgrade-1.0.0-1.fc10 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 10.
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/preupgrade-1.0.0-1.fc10

preupgrade-1.0.0-1.fc8 has been pushed to the Fedora 8 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

preupgrade-1.0.0-1.fc9 has been pushed to the Fedora 9 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

preupgrade-1.0.0-1.fc10 has been pushed to the Fedora 10 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.