Upgrading from EOL Fedora using yum

1. Back up your system
Back up any personal data to an external hard drive or to another machine. If there is some unrecoverable error that requires a fresh install, you don't want to lose any data.

2. Read about common problems
Further down in this page there is a list of common problems for specific versions. Some of them require attention before the upgrade.

General advice on upgrading Fedora can be found on the Upgrading page. You should also read the Installation Guide and Release Notes for the version you plan to upgrade to - they contain important information regarding upgrading issues. Finally, check the list of Common bugs.

3. Clean Stuff
Review and remove all .rpmsave and .rpmnew files before and after upgrading. (And if you have selinux enabled then remember to check security context if you move config files around.)

Now is a good time to remove packages you don't use - especially non-standard packages.

Then remove all traces of the version you are leaving from the yum cache in.

yum clean all

4. Switch repositories
Update the packages that decide which yum repositories to use.

rpm -Uhv ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases//Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm

(The architecture doesn't matter for this  package.)

For archived versions of Fedora (e.g., from 10 included downwards): rpm -Uhv ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases//Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm

Note: Some users have reported that attempting to download through rpm returns a 550 response and "transfer failed" messages. If this is the case, you can download the rpms and install locally. Consider: wget ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases//Fedora//os/Packages/fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm rpm -Uvh fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm

For archived versions of Fedora (e.g., from 10 included downwards): wget ftp://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases//Fedora//os/Packages/fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm rpm -Uvh fedora-release-*.noarch.rpm

Make sure the new repo files isn't placed as  files, perhaps by

mv /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo mv /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo.rpmnew /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo

If you have 3rd party repositories configured, you may need to adjust them for the new Fedora version. If you switch from one Fedora release to another there is often nothing that needs to be done. If you switch to Rawhide from a standard Fedora release (or vice versa) then most of the time you will need to install the Rawhide release RPMs from the 3rd party repository as well (or the standard ones, if switching back).

Note that the upgrade is likely to fail if there are outdated dependencies from packages not backed by a yum repository or backed by a repository which isn't ready for the new version.

5. Do the upgrade
If using selinux make sure it is in permissive mode - neither disabled nor enforcing.

It is a good idea to do the upgrade outside the graphical environment. Log out of your graphical desktop and then go to a text console

ctrl + alt + F2

log in as root, and go into runlevel 3

telinit 3

Upgrade all packages with

yum upgrade

might complain about conflicts or requirements. That is probably because you have used non-standard repositories or installed non-standard packages manually. Try to guess which packages cause the problem (or at least is a part of the dependency chain) - uninstall them and try again. Remember to install the packages again if they are essential.

Ensure that all (new) essential packages from the new version are installed with

yum groupupdate Base

You might want to update other groups too, see

yum grouplist

For example

yum groupupdate "GNOME Desktop Environment" \ "Development Tools" "Server Configuration Tools" \ "Hardware Support" "Sound and Video" \ "Graphical Internet" "Fonts" \ "Games and Entertainment" "Printing Software" \ "Administration Tools" "Office/Productivity" "System Tools"

6. Preparing for reboot
Before booting you should usually install the bootloader from your new grub by running /sbin/grub-install BOOTDEVICE - where BOOTDEVICE is usually  (If you get an error '/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive' from that, then try /sbin/grub-install --recheck /dev/sda.)

Also, the order of init scripts could have changed from the previous version. A command to reset the order is: cd /etc/rc.d/init.d; for f in *; do /sbin/chkconfig $f resetpriorities; done

Again, run  to find packages that haven't been upgraded.

Fedora 12 -> Fedora 13
First install the new fedora 13 gpg key. You may wish to verify this package against https://fedoraproject.org/keys and the fedora ssl certificate.

rpm --import https://fedoraproject.org/static/E8E40FDE.txt

Upgrade all packages with

yum update yum yum clean all yum --releasever=13 distro-sync


 * Testing shows that upgrading within X will cause X to hang when installing, but it can be done anyway by making sure that   is the last package to update ... YMMV.
 * Intel video no longer works without Kernel Mode Setting (KMS). You must remove 'nomodeset' from your /etc/grub.conf kernel command line, if present.
 * nVidia video no longer works without kernel mode Setting (KMS). You must remove 'nomodeset' from your /etc/grub.conf kernel command line, if present.
 * It may be necessary to run "db_recover -h /var/lib/ldap/ ; chown ldap:ldap /var/lib/ldap/*" once in order for slapd to start.

Fedora 11 -> Fedora 12

 * All Fedora 12 RPM packages use XZ/LZMA compression, which is only supported by the rpm-4.7.1-1 update (or later) for Fedora 11. Before upgrading from Fedora 11, run.
 * It is not possible to update directly from Fedora 10 or earlier with yum. To upgrade from Fedora 10, first update to Fedora 11, and then upgrade from Fedora 11 to Fedora 12. If you are using a release before Fedora 10, use one of the official upgrade methods or backup your data, perform a fresh installation, and restore from backup.
 * Upgrades from Fedora 11 might currently fail with missing dependencies (for example related to or ). The dependencies are ok, but Fedora 11  has problems resolving them (bug 519172).
 * If your root filesystem does not mount with 'defaults' options, you will need to add the root filesystem's mount options to grub.conf with the kernel flag  - initramfs does not pick up the options the way initrd used to.  e.g. if you mount your root with the flags   then you would add to the end of the 'kernel' line in grub.conf:   .  After updating to dracut-004-4.fc12 or later, this kernel flag can be removed.

Fedora 11 -> Fedora 12

 * All Fedora 12 RPM packages use XZ/LZMA compression, which is only supported by the rpm-4.7.1-1 update (or later) for Fedora 11. Before upgrading from Fedora 11, run.
 * It is not possible to update directly from Fedora 10 or earlier with yum. To upgrade from Fedora 10, first update to Fedora 11, and then upgrade from Fedora 11 to Fedora 12. If you are using a release before Fedora 10, use one of the official upgrade methods or backup your data, perform a fresh installation, and restore from backup.
 * Upgrades from Fedora 11 might currently fail with missing dependencies (for example related to or ). The dependencies are ok, but Fedora 11  has problems resolving them (bug 519172).
 * If your root filesystem does not mount with 'defaults' options, you will need to add the root filesystem's mount options to grub.conf with the kernel flag  - initramfs does not pick up the options the way initrd used to.  e.g. if you mount your root with the flags   then you would add to the end of the 'kernel' line in grub.conf:   .  After updating to dracut-004-4.fc12 or later, this kernel flag can be removed.

Fedora 10 -> Fedora 11
yum update rpm YumRepo Error: All mirror URLs are not using ftp, http[s] or file. Eg. / This is 498720. Workaround is to manually edit the URL in /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo as described at https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/2009-June/msg00783.html
 * It is only possible to upgrade to Fedora 11 from an updated Fedora 10. Older systems must be upgraded to Fedora 10 first. The RPM format has been changed for Fedora 11, so the older  must be updated first.  Otherwise the process will fail with   dependency problems. Support for the new format has been backported to Fedora 10 in an update.
 * New  built when installing a new kernel while running Fedora 10 might fail. To solve that boot with an old kernel (to get the new userspace) and (re)install the new kernel.
 * Systems with PAE support (indicated by  in  ) should use  . The new kernel must be changed/installed manually: Set   in   and  . Refer to Dave Jones' blog post for details.
 * The yum update step should NOT be run inside a gnome desktop session/gnome-terminal. 494046 could result in a unusable install when gnome-terminal segfaults during the upgrade. Update should be run in a vty, runlevel 3, or a screen session.
 * fedora-release-11-1.noarch changes the yum mirrorlist URL so that it uses a "metalink", but the version of yum currently in F10 doesn't understand this syntax, leading to yum downloads failing with this error message:
 * Some packages in Fedora 10 are regarded as newer than those supplied by Fedora 11 and its updates repository. These include ntpd, ntpdate (506040, 504980), unique, unique-devel, eclipse-changelog, eclipse-svnkit and svnkit. You may wish to remove these before performing the upgrade, then reinstall them afterwards. Doing so may require.
 * Some i386 packages in Fedora 10 are replaced with i586, i686 or x86_64 packages in Fedora 11. These include gpm.i386, glibc-2.9-3.i386. You may wish to remove these before performing the upgrade, then reinstall them afterwards. Doing so may require.
 * mplayer-1.0-0.104.20090204svn.fc10 from the RPM Fusion repository has a dependency on libfaad.so.0 that the depsolve doesn't find, but rpm_check_debug does. You may wish to remove mplayer before performing the upgrade, then reinstall them afterwards. Doing so may require.

Fedora 9 -> Fedora 10

 * Check the Fedora 10 Installation Guide and Fedora 10 Release Notes
 * packages can be found at
 * GDM starts on tty1 by default, not tty7.
 * anaconda by default now refers to encrypted devices by UUID, not by device name, to better handle device name changes. An encrypted device using partition  with UUID   would now be called   instead of  . You may wish to make the same changes on your system on upgrade; if you do, make sure to run   afterwards.
 * If you use non-root encrypted devices, you will need to re-run  for any older kernels that you want to still boot on the system.
 * It's been reported that there are problems with Pidgin i.e.:
 * the fix was to remove Pidgin
 * the fix was to remove Pidgin

Fedora 8 -> Fedora 9

 * Check the Installer section in Release Notes)
 * After "the incident" you should use updated fedora-release packages from
 * If you are running as a  Host (Dom0) you should not upgrade to Fedora 9.
 * Upgrading the thunderbird package will fail . The current workaround is.
 * If you are upgrading to Fedora 9 and use, you must upgrade to the latest version of   for your prior release to ensure a clean upgrade. Fedora 8 users must have   or later, while Fedora 7 users must have  .  Bug report here.
 * Due to the switch from sysvinit to Upstart, it is recommended that users who do an upgrade on a live filesystem to Fedora 9 reboot soon afterwards. If you do not reboot, you may want to take careful note of any '/etc/inittab.rpmsave' or '/etc/inittab.rpmnew' files. When rebooting after an upgrade then be aware that sysvinit that was used to start the system can't be used to shut it down.
 * You may find that after upgrading, you can no longer log in to GNOME. If this is the case, use ctrl-alt-F1 to access command prompt, then check the tail of .xsession-errors. If you see a comment like "(named color or font does not exist)", then you may be able to fix this using http://matthew.peach.net.nz/2008/05/18/how-to-fix-badname-named-color-or-font-does-not-exist-error/.

Fedora 7 -> Fedora 8

 * New pulseaudio and flash support packages must be installed manually:

yum groupinstall sound-and-video gnome-desktop (if you are using Gnome) yum groupinstall sound-and-video kde-desktop (if you are using KDE) yum install libflashsupport paman padevchooser


 * The Fedora 7 avahi packagage fails to uninstall; remove it manually with

rpm -e --noscripts avahi-0.6.17-1.fc7


 * On 64 bit machines (x86_64) you may have to remove some 32 bit libraries. For example dbus:

yum erase dbus.i386


 * You may find it easier to use the yum shell to stack these commands in a single transaction:

yum shell > erase dbus.i386 > update > run


 * A lot of KDE packages are no longer multilib in F8. If you are on x86_64, you will need to erase the i386 versions of these packages by hand, like so:

yum erase kde{accessibility{,-devel},base,edu,graphics,multimedia{,-extras},network,sdk,utils{,-devel},webdev}.i386


 * Various other packages including Beryl are no longer in F8 and not obsoleted:

yum erase beryl\*

Fedora Core 6 -> Fedora 7

 * Fedora 7 replaces the old IDE subsystem with libata. Drive device names which previously started /dev/hd.. will become /dev/sd.. after the upgrade. /dev/hda1 will usually become /dev/sda1, although there may not be a direct relationship between the old and new device names (for example hdd does not necessarily become sdd). Before you reboot be sure to change all references to /dev/hd.. in your config, especially /etc/fstab - where it however may be simpler to refer to filesystems by label (check out the programs blkid, tune2fs, and mlabel). LVM Volume names are not affected. In /boot/grub/device.map change /dev/hd.. to /dev/sd.. before running grub-install - and don't change (hd0). Changing /boot/grub/grub.conf may also be required.


 * The libata layer represents all hard disks as SCSI disks, which are limited to 15 partitions in the kernel. IDE hard disks with more than 15 partitions are not supported in Fedora 7.


 * On a system which has been upgraded from releases prior to FC6 you may need to remove up2date and rhnlib


 * If you see the message  when performing a   uninstall and reinstall the gpm package.


 * If you had installed Suns jre it might be removed during upgrade. Be aware that /  requires.


 * If you get  and/or   during your   ensure you have done a   and check that both the   and   repositories are available from your mirror. You will need the   repo for the upgrade to succeed.


 * Since Fedora Core 6 uses python 2.4 and Fedora 7 uses python 2.5, do not try and run  before upgrading everything else - this succeeds but leaves yum in an unusable state.

Fedora Core 5 -> Fedora Core 6

 * After upgrading, you cannot use the DVD ISO loopback mounted as a repository directly (e.g. no ) because the repodata files contain URLs of type    which yum can't handle.  You can use the loopback-mounted DVD for the initial upgrade from FC5 -> FC6, just not thereafter.  After removing the   option from your   file, remember to.

Fedora Core 4 -> Fedora Core 5

 * Before upgrading update your kernel first.


 * Make sure you have the latest kernel ABOVE 2.6.14 and uninstall all kernel versions before it, otherwise initscripts and a few other packages will conflict and prevent the ugprade. Use something like the command below


 * Install  in the Fedora Core 5 version. Check our mirror sites  for a faster download.


 * Update your system


 * After upgrading, selinux permissions may be incorrect, causing interesting failures such as metacity not starting. As suggested below, to fix this, run  and reboot

Fedora Core 3 -> Fedora Core 4

 * make sure you're on the latest version of yum for FC3:
 * Download fedora-release for FC4:
 * wget http://yourmirrorhere/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/$yourarch/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
 * yum update ( This will start the upgradation process to FC4)
 * Once you have updated, run:  (change GNOME to KDE if appropriate). That'll get you some new packages that were added in FC4 like Evince and NetworkManager.
 * Some new groups were added -  - check out Eclipse and Java Development in particular.
 * Some new groups were added -  - check out Eclipse and Java Development in particular.

Problems:


 * Postgres database in FC4 has a newer incompatible format from the previous versions. Manual dump and restoration is required if you using this database. Look at the postgres documentation for more details on this.

yum update kernel reboot yum remove kernel-2.6.11\*FC3\* yum upgrade reboot
 * kernel requires kernel-utils (or vice-versa) run:

This means you have too much crap in your rpmdb and it's taking a while to go through it. Check out how many kernels you have installed: rpm -q kernel kernel-smp and remove the old ones you may also try running: rpm --rebuilddb and see if it helps any. I've found that removing old kernels and rebuilding the rpmdb helped this problem.
 * Takes forever and a day and hangs at:

yum remove perl.i386 TODO: Add list of bonobo i386 packages to remove here koffice was removed from Fedora Core and not moved to extras - so there's no way to complete an upgrade to FC4 without removing it. run: yum remove koffice then your update should complete.
 * x86_64 upgrade requires removal of certain i386 packages before update
 * Error: Missing Dependency: libpython2.3.so.1.0 is needed by package koffice


 * x86_64 systems seems to hang during "Running Transaction Test"

Seems related to bug 155730 -- Maybe a update to the "rpm-4.3.3-3.0.fc3" (currently in updates-testing) might solve this. Ugly workaround (to be done as root):
 * > /var/log/lastlog

warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID db42a60e public key not available for  Retrieving GPG key from file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora
 * GPG check fails with this message :

The GPG key at file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora (0x4F2A6FD2) is already installed but is not the correct key for this package. Check that this is the correct key for the "Fedora Core 4 - i386 - Base" repository. Edit /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo and replace the line gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora with: gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY


 * SELinux gets messed up. I had to redownload the selinux-policy-targeted RPM from my mirror, do a forced uninstall of the old package, clean out the .rpmnew and .rpmsave files then install the new policy. Then I had to run "/sbin/fixfiles relabel" and wait. If I didn't do that, I found I couldn't log in.
 * If SELinux does give you problems, it can be disabled on bootup by pressing "a" on the grub bootup menu, then adding "enforcing=off" to the arguments list.

diskspacecheck=0 in. The RPM transaction will need a lot of diskspace temporarily (much more than one might think), so be careful. Don't forget to remove that later after the upgrade.
 * RPM complains about missing diskspace, but there is a lot free. If you are really sure your diskspace is enough, set

sudo rpm -e gcc32
 * Yum complains about files conflicting in the GCC package. This system was upgraded from Fedora Core 1.  Remove the gcc32 package:

sudo depmod -ae -F /boot/System.map-[your  kernel version here]
 * Some of your modules don't load after the upgrade. When you investigate modprobe doesn't work as expected.  Run depmod:


 * Yum has been reported to be hanging after upgrading. Updating the pysqlite package might fix it.

Fedora Core 2 -> Fedora Core 3
Go here for most of this info: http://linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/misc/fc2-fc3-update-with-yum.txt

Fedora Core 1 -> Fedora Core 2
Just Upgrade using anaconda - save yourself a world of pain. But if you really want to try, there's these hints by Seth Vidal: http://linux.duke.edu/~skvidal/misc/fc1-fc2-yum-hints.txt