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Converting Existing Systems From One Distro To Another?

Posted by Cliff on from the converting-from-one-to-another dept.

Sam "Criswell" Hart asks: "I have been using Red Hat on my machines since RH4.2. The reasons were largely due to bandwidth issues and the fact that I could always get the latest RH ISOs for free. However, since 6.2 I have been disappointed with RH, and 7.0 with its not-quite compatible GCC would be very bad for my free-software projects. I have been thinking of switching to Caldera or possibly to Mandrake. However, I am spoiled by the fact that I can just pop in a new RH CD and upgrade my existing system quite painlessly. Because there are so many other RPM-based Linux distros out there, and they have update options, are there any (esp. Mandrake or Caldera) which can relatively easily update systems based on other distros? For example, anyone have any success or troubles trying to upgrade a RH6.2 system with Mandrake 7.2? Is it possible, or is there something significant blocking such a thing?" While updating a system with software intended for another distribution isn't necessarily good idea, are there utilities out there that can perform the necessary operations needed to convert an existing system from one flavor of Linux to another?

3 of 17 comments (clear)

  1. What's wrong with RH? by Tet · · Score: 4
    I have been disappointed with RH, and 7.0 with its not-quite compatible GCC would be very bad for my free-software projects.

    How, exactly, is it bad for your free software projects? Do you actually know what's incompatible about the gcc in RH7? Binaries compiled with RH7 won't work on earlier versions of RH -- just as RH6 binaries didn't work on RH5, and RH5 binaries didn't work on RH4. But the reverse is not true. You can run older binaries just fine on RH7. And if you want to compile stuff on RH7 that will work on older versions, just use kgcc -- it's exactly the same egcs-2.91.66 that was shipped with RH6. So what, exactly, is the problem? Or are you just listening to the ill-informed whining on slashdot?

    --
    "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
  2. Re:Various Distros by Tet · · Score: 4
    Backup /home, /usr/local, /etc, and some of the directories in /opt if necessary.

    A well designed system will have /home, /usr/local and /opt on separate filesystems anyway, so it's just a matter of mounting them in the appropriate places after the upgrade. Of course, this doesn't help newbies suckered into putting everything in one big filesystem by the CorelLinux install (for example -- there are plenty of other offenders).

    --
    "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
  3. Various Distros by jfunk · · Score: 4

    I've gone through a number of distros. Here's my method for conversion:

    Backup /home, /usr/local, /etc, and some of the directories in /opt if necessary. I stick to /usr/local and /opt for stuff I compile myself. I also have htdocs there.

    Generate a list of installed packages. With an RPM distro this is easy: rpm -qa > rpmbackup.txt

    Backup the database.

    Install the new distro from scratch.

    Restore from backups. I drop /home, /usr/local, and whatever I saved from /opt in place.

    Copy the appropriate lines from /etc/password, /etc/shadow, and /etc/groups into the new system.

    Configure any software. This often means restoring a file into /etc, sometimes it's easier to just reconfigure.

    Restore the database.

    Install any software the new distro didn't. I now use SuSE, so this part is fairly short, TkPGP, OSS commercial, and CivCTP. I now shudder at the thought of moving to Red Hat, or anything other than Debian, due to the amount of software I'd have to install individually...