Upgrade to Fedora Core 3, Part 2

In Part 1 of this Recipe, I showed you how to install Fedora Core 3 Linux and fix the program necessary components to make it possible to complete the upgrade. We also installed a Win4Lin-prepared kernel. Now, in Part 2, we'll install Win4Lin/ Windows over FC3, update the FC3 installation, and finish up the post-installation cleanup.

Before we begin, here are a couple of pre-installation notes. First, If you want to keep your installed applications and any data you've kept in the /win tree, back it up (if you haven't already). Second, you're reinstalling Win4Lin and then Windows from Win4Lin, so the process is basically the same as the original installation. Third and most important: Any user information on /home/username/win (including installed programs) will be trashed when the directory is replaced in the course of the Windows installation.

To get started, find your Windows registration key and the installation disk. Find your Win4Lin software registration key—if you downloaded yours, your registration key is probably in your e-mail directories somewhere. Also find the Win4Lin setup program on the drive, or the installation CD if you bought a physical package. Registration keys where required are part of the user documentation in Linux as well as in Windows or any other OS.

To start the Win4Lin installation process:

# cd [wherever win4lin-setup is]
# win4lin-setup

When the Win4Lin installer asks for permission to update the installer or Win4Lin itself, select Yes. Enter the registration information and key. Insert the Windows installation disk when it tells you to. Next, write your /username/win directory back if you need to. If you copied it from a working Win4Lin installation to begin with, you should be able to write it right back without a problem. This beats reinstalling all the Windows software, which is presumably the reason you're running Win4Lin/Windows to begin with. I've had just one problem with this FC3/Win4Lin upgrade: audio playback from within Windows programs. There's a random interruption and weird echo in the sound, though the video seems fine. While I think the audio is fixable, for me, it's not worth fixing. My multimedia playback in FC3 is good enough, so there isn't any reason to use Windows Media Player or Apple Quicktime. Since my system was up and running, I've seen only one or two files the Linux multimedia playback couldn't handle.

Updating the Installation

It's good practice to get the latest copies of everything with your installation. You'll have to download and install updated files to do this. But before doing this, make a complete image backup.

It is no longer reasonable to keep distros up-to-date without broadband, unless you've got a dedicated phone-line and are willing to render your system inaccessible for Internet use for 24 hours at a time. If you don't already have broadband, either get it or find a friend that has it and hook up to their LAN. Alternatively, you may decide that upgrading the OS to the latest app versions isn't worth the trouble. If it all basically works right, just upgrade as needed.

I don't have a dedicated line, so I had to do my downloads in several-hour chunks. Both up2date and the yum automated program installer support this: You can shut down during a download, and it'll take up where it left off, starting the next download by re-downloading the file you stopped the download on. But it's annoying and time-consuming. I recently ordered DSL, but it came too late to help me in the downloading needed here.

But several nights—about 30 hours in all—of downloading via dialup using

# yum upgrade

did not produce a workable upgrade. I'd done something that's warned against by the people who maintain the competing yum repositories: I mixed major repository families (fedora/fedora-extras vs. dag/atrpms). As a result, programs from one yum repository were apparently downloading programs to fill their dependency requirements from the other repository, which didn't work together correctly.

The only place where this is a serious problem is when one is doing a full update of an OS. At least, this is the only place I've ever had a serious problem. Should you use yum to update your OS, I suggest disabling either fedora/fedora-extras or dag/atrpms in yum.conf using the instructions in the "Upgrading Yum" section in Part 1 of this Recipe. Unless you exclude individual files in the command line, it's a simple command that updates everything except the kernel. Up2date produces a list of files to be upgraded and a checkbox next to each to allow you to include and exclude individual files.

If you can't get any sort of broadband access, make a list of inessential applications, especially the big ones. Then, uncheck the corresponding up2date boxes. I think the filesize shown in the up2date wizard refers to headers rather than the hundreds of megs of files corresponding to them. It doesn't take several nights to download 255K, even by dialup.

There is a workaround that will get you the individual file sizes, but it isn't pleasant. Open a terminal window:

$ rpm "qi

This dumps the content of the installed RPM descriptions to the terminal. From the terminal (I'm using KDE Konsole) menu: Edit > Save History As > filename (/path/to/filename whatever convenient). Then scroll through the file looking for files that are over 10 MB, and ask yourself whether you need them. If you don't, open a text editor and list the files you don't want upgraded. When up2date produces a list of files to upgrade, uncheck the corresponding application entries. But if you don't understand what a listed program does, don't change it! You might accidentally delete a file critical to the operation of the OS, or part of an application you might really, really miss.

One of the few compensations of upgrading this way is that you might discover programs you never knew you had. For instance, I discovered my Linux distribution included speech-synthesizer software.

I revisited up2date and realized the problem was a repository conflict with the version of yum I installed. Note the bottom line in the Warning prompt, shown in the screenshot below. I simply unchecked yum, meaning "do not upgrade," and the problem disappeared.

To run it yourself, do this: Start > System Tools > RedHatNetwork (System Update). It'll open a root password prompt and put you into a wizard. By default, up2date won't try to update/replace a newly installed kernel, like the one you just patched and installed for Win4Lin.

When run, up2date will go through the list of installed rpms, then compare that list to the list available on the update servers listed in the up2date configuration file. Then it will download and install the programs that match both lists. The configuration can be modified to add other upgrade servers; the default is fedora/fedora-extras. To avoid repository conflict issues, I suggest leaving it that way.