fedup-dracut is a required part of the upgrade process for F18 and forward. At this time, there are no builds of fedup-dracut available in the F18 repositories. Since this interferes with the ability to upgrade from F17 to F18, proposing as a blocker due to violation of the following F18 beta release criterion [1]: For each one of the release-blocking package sets ('minimal', and the package sets for each one of the release-blocking desktops), it must be possible to successfully complete an upgrade from a fully updated installation of the previous stable Fedora release with that package set installed, using any officially recommended upgrade mechanisms. The upgraded system must meet all release criteria. [1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_18_Beta_Release_Criteria
Fedup F18 Bodhi update https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/fedup-dracut-0.7-1.fc18
Discussed at 2012-11-01 blocker review meeting: http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-qa/2012-11-01/f18beta-blocker-review-6.5.2012-11-01-17.49.log.txt . Accepted as a blocker per criterion cited in the description.
Is it still possible to yum upgrade a machine from F17? Am I correct in saying that fedup-dracut is not required to achieve this?
Yes and yes.
fedup-dracut-0.7.1-1.fc18 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 18. https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2012-18721/fedup-dracut-0.7.1-1.fc18
Since we have fedup-dracut builds in updates-testing now, moving to VERIFIED
fedup-dracut-0.7.1-1.fc18 has been pushed to the Fedora 18 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.