From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.76 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.16-22 i686) Description of problem: The current upgrade process seems to require console access to the machine. I maintain machines that are a long way away, and I would like to be able to upgrade between Red Hat versions without having to visit all of them. Using rpm --freshen <RedHat_cdrom>/RedHat/RPMS/* already comes *close* to accomplishing this, but it doesn't do quite everything that the upgrader would do. For example, it doesn't re-construct the lilo.conf for any upgraded kernels, and prepare a ramdisk. Of course, I can use "rpm --freshen" then do my own kernel changes, but this is really just guesswork. There could be other things in an upgrade that I'm not doing. I'd like some certainty that I'm leaving the system in a consistent state. Thanks for considering it, or any pointers! :-)
I think up2date can do most of the stuff that you are talking about...not sure about preparing the ramdisk, though.
Some of the systems that I manage do not have Internet access; they're accessed through private networks. Can up2date do version changes? (i.e., will it upgrade the redhat-release package?)
Is there any chance that Red Hat systems can be maintained similarly to Debian systems; i.e., no necessary "upgrade" process, just package updates?
Well, up2date isn't going to do you much good if you don't have internet access. But to answer your question, yes, up2date can update /etc/redhat-release. up2date uses RPM as the package manager...it just allows you to pull the RPMs from Red Hat Network. Similiar to apt-get, just different. One problem is that while up2date can upgrade the kernel, it doesn't currently modify the /etc/lilo.conf file or prepare the ramdisk. Basically the problems that affect RPM also affect up2date.
Someone closed this RFE as "notabug". Does that indicate that Red Hat is not interested in providing for release upgrades on remote systems? I.e., does this mean that Red Hat is only interested in supporting upgrades where you can physically visit the machine?
Oh sorry. Wrong button. Mouse too fast for the brain sometimes. :)
ewt, is this related to the telnet stuff you were working on?
Could be, but the right solution I think is to use kickstart booted via lilo to upgrade. This should solve the problem, and the system will reboot into the upgraded system. up2date should be able to do this as well, but that's not an anaconda issue.