[ale] Is there a path out of the Centos 6 forest?

[Jerald Sheets]

Below

> On Oct 3, 2019, at 5:56 PM, Lightner, Jeffrey via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> 
> I learned long ago that doing in place upgrades of one major release to another for any OS are generally a bad idea:
> 1) They are often not supported well.  I'm pretty sure RH never "supported" the upgrade from 6 to 7 though they did mention that some people had said there was a way to do it.

I don’t know if you guys can see this or not, but the upgrade is an officially supported behavior with documentation:
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/migration_planning_guide/chap-red_hat_enterprise_linux-migration_planning_guide-upgrading


> 2) No matter how much planning you do ahead of time you end of having niggling little issues to address after the upgrade.


Backup, backup, backup, and then restore a handful of files to ensure the backup was good

> 3) The old release leaves many things behind and you're never quite sure later what is safe to delete.

In a RHEL upgrade, these files are often backed up before being replaced with new things, or if you have a complete removal of a package, “yes” they leave the previous package intact and it is up to you to “rpm -e” that package and clear the configuration files for it.

> 
> Much better to take the pain of a new install than an in-place upgrade.   Another benefit to doing that is you can see a lot more of what the new setup does rather than trying to force the new release to do what the old one did.

That’s going to depend on the veracity of the interred data.  Sometimes you cannot just nuke and pave. Yes, the. Instances are slim, but they do exist.


—jms