Upgrading Linux OS. Anything I should know??

[uCsDNerd]

Hi everyone. I'm being asked to upgrade a Linux workstation at my work. I've worked with Linux and Unix before, but I've never been asked to modify/upgrade the OS. Is there anything I should know about the process??? Things I should make sure NOT to do? Thanks!

 

[TheOmegaCode]

Which distro are you using? Each one seems to be a bit different from the next...
Quick and dirty method alla Chaotic42

1. Download latest version from your favorite FTP site
2. Decompress it
3. Run make menuconfig
4. Choose all options
5. Run make dep
6. make clean
7. make bzImage (anyone still use zImage?)
8. make modules
9. make modules_install
10. Update your bootloader with the new kernel info

 

[manly]

I would have inferred he's talking about the complete OS, not just the kernel. In many cases, building the vanilla kernel isn't the best idea anyhow. Building from the vendor's source is preferred.

Anyhow, if you're referring to upgrading the entire OS, my experience with this procedure has been pretty good for both Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux. The only caveat is that you might prefer to do a clean install for major changes.

I.e. I would upgrade Red Hat Linux from 7.0 to 7.3. But 6.2 to 7.3 is riskier, and I would prefer a clean install.

SuSE versions their product differently, so for current releases, it's relatively safe to go from SuSE 7.1 (or later) to 8.0.

In general, upgrading Linux OS distributions works better than upgrading Winblows. In theory, you can start from versions older than I've recommended, but again there would be higher risk of breakage.

 

[TheOmegaCode]

In either case, upgrading varies from OS to OS...