8.2. Upgrading Using the Installer
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Installations are Recommended |
In general, the Fedora Project recommends that you keep user data on a
separate /home partition
and perform a fresh installation. For more information on
partitions and how to set them up, refer to Chapter 9, Disk Partitioning
.
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If you choose to upgrade your system using the installation
program, any software not provided by Fedora that conflicts with
Fedora software is overwritten. Before you begin an upgrade
this way, make a list of your system's current packages for later
reference:
rpm -qa --qf '%{NAME} %{VERSION}-%{RELEASE} %{ARCH} > ~/old-pkglist.txt'
After installation, consult this list to discover which
packages you may need to rebuild or retrieve from non-Fedora
software repositories.
Next, make a backup of any system configuration data:
su -c 'tar czf /tmp/etc-`date +%F`.tar.gz /etc'
mv /tmp/etc-*.tar.gz ~
You should also make a complete backup of any important data
before performing an upgrade. Important data may include the
contents of your entire /home
directory as well as content
from services such as an Apache, FTP, or SQL server, or a source
code management system. Although upgrades are not destructive, if
you perform one improperly there is a small possibility of data
loss.
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Storing Backups |
Note that the above examples store backup materials in a
/home directory. If your
/home directory is not a
separate partition,
you should not follow these
examples verbatim!
Store your backups on another
device such as CD or DVD discs or an external hard disk.
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For more information on completing the upgrade process later,
refer to Section 18.2, “Finishing an Upgrade”.