Description of problem: Managing software on FC is currently slightly complicated. This tutorial includes an overview of the situation and how the different applications relate, as well as documenting yum. It's a trimmed version of a document that has been posted to the fedora-docs-list previously, and another piece of that earlier document has been reworked as the tutorial on bug 155180. Additional info: HTML: http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~hobb/fedora/yum-software-management-en/ DocBook source: http://www.mythic-beasts.com/~hobb/fedora/fedora-yum-software-management-0.2.tar.gz
This document has now been imported into CVS as the module yum-software-management
I am running rawhide and get some error that seems to indicate I should upgrade the kernel. According to docs this is supposed to be automatic. The yum software management does not indicate how to upgrade the kernel. It is, afterall, "software". There are hints and references on the web to making a backup of the running kernel, but I did not find any howto yet for a rawhide/fedora/rpm/yum/kernel "safe" upgrade process. I would like to see this as a section of the yum doc or a pointer to such an article in the yum doc. PFE
Sample reference: http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=877336 PFE
More: http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Upgrading_Red_Hat_Linux_with_yum.html http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/YumUpgradeFaq
The author is referring to the fact that current Rawhide has a "conflicts" with kernels < 2.6.13, so users trying to "update" to Rawhide will not be able to do so without removing old kernels from their system first. "Updating" to Rawhide has never been supported as far as I know, and users should expect these sorts of things to break from time to time. This particular problem has been discussed several times in the last week or two on fedora-devel-list, in fact. If you are upgrading within the Core -> updates-released path, you should not encounter this type of problem. It might not be a bad idea to simply have an admonition in the doc about using yum with Rawhide. Stuart, I leave this one up to your discretion.
I am running rawhide. I have no problem with an admonition if it also points to a solution, e.g. a reference to the answer (hopefully :) referred to on fedora-devel-list. PFE
I think that you've highlighted a weakness in the currently available documentation - AFAIK the only documentation specifically for Rawhide is the Testing Guide in development on the Wiki: http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Drafts/TestingGuide Fedora kernel packages install a new kernel and make it the default, but the previous kernels (and their packages) are retained on the system, so it normally it just works and you can rollback to older kernels at any time. There ought to be a note on kernel packages in this document - I've now filed #170709 to remind me to fix this. Version upgrading and switching to Rawhide require a bit more than the standard yum commands, and details vary over time, so I think that those cases are probably better handled by separate documents, like the FAQ that you mentioned.
I don't think we should reference answers to very specific Rawhide problems which may or may not exist in the future. Since FC5 -> Rawhide won't show this specific problem, the admonition would then be meaningless. Instead, let's have any such admonition point to the Testing Guide for further information.
Is this still a problem?