Upgrading Fedora using yum

This page contains information explaining how to upgrade Fedora using.

Upgrading Fedora using yum directly
When upgrading with yum you don't get any help from Anaconda, but with a typical system it might be able to upgrade systems remotely over ssh and with limited downtime. (You will still need to reboot to get the new kernel and system libraries/services running).

A live upgrade with yum usually works well with a typical installation and when following the advice below.

Participate
If you are upgrading using Yum and it shows any general dependency issues, please file them in http://bugzilla.redhat.com. But please read this page, all references pages and search the mailing list archives before filing bugs. And of course, please help keep this page updated.

If you want to help make live upgrades work smoothly, join the Live Upgrade Special Interest Group.

1. Backup your system
Backup 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 specific to yum upgrades 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.

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Note that the upgrade is likely to fail if there are outdated dependencies from packages not backed by a yum repository or backed by a repository which isn't ready for the new version.

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

(or)

log in as root, and go into runlevel 3

init 3

Update yum to latest version available in your Fedora version
yum update yum

Install the new fedora gpg key for the version you are updating to
Keys you may find and verify at

https://fedoraproject.org/keys

or see a version specific update instructions at the bottom.

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

yum clean all

Upgrade all packages
yum --releasever= distro-sync

Note: While it is recommended to upgrade to intermediate releases if upgrading from an older release (for example upgrading from Fedora 12 to 13, then 13 to 14), depending on what version you are upgrading from, this step may fail with an error about GPG keys being in the wrong format. To overcome this, you can add the "--nogpgcheck" switch to the above yum distro-sync command.

5. Make sure Fedora is upgraded
Distro-sync will usually take care of upgrades for the third party repositories you have enabled as well. Confirm with yum repolist after the upgrade process is over. 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). For Fedora 16 and later, use  instead of. See below first for important information about upgrading to Fedora 16 from prior releases.

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.

From pre-release
If you are upgrading to a final release from an alpha, beta, preview, or other Rawhide release, please see Upgrading from pre-release to final.

To development version
yum update yum yum --releasever=rawhide distro-sync --skip-broken --nogpgcheck

Fedora 16 -> Fedora 17
First install the new Fedora 17 gpg key

rpm --import https://fedoraproject.org/static/1ACA3465.txt

Fedora 17 will locate the entire base operating system in /usr. The directories /bin, /sbin, /lib, /lib64 will only be symlinks: /bin → /usr/bin /sbin → /usr/sbin /lib → /usr/lib /lib64 → /usr/lib64

Some reasoning behind this change is outlined here: http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/TheCaseForTheUsrMerge

Currently installed systems need some manual steps to convert the current system to match the layout of Fedora 17. After that, the system can continue to be updated with YUM as usual.

Some RPM packages in Fedora 17 are carrying an RPM dependency guard, which will make sure, they can only be installed when /bin, /sbin, /lib, /lib64 are symlinks and not directories like in Fedora 16 and older.

The installed system’s base filesystem layout can not be safely altered, while the system itself is running on top of it. Dracut, the initramfs used to find and mount the root filesystem, can be instructed to convert the filesystem to match Fedora 17’s expectations.

If your system has a split-off /usr, a separate mount point, the dracut /usr mount conversion logic might not work. If /usr resides on the net, then ou should add "rd.neednet=1" and the network settings like "ip=dhcp" on the kernel command line. /usr on iSCSI, FCoE, NBD also is supported, as long as “netroot=...” is specified on the kernel command line for these disks (see man dracut.kernel(7)). If you have /usr on LVM, MD raid or DM raid, make sure the kernel command line has either all settings like "rd.lvm.lv=..." to ensure the /usr device is accessible in dracut or just remove all restrictions like "rd.lvm...", "rd.md...", "rd.dm...". Either way, you should probably use anaconda to update, if you are experiencing problems with a separate /usr.

Here are the steps to prepare your system, to convert it, and to be able to continue updating your installed system with yum:

Download and install the most recent dracut packages:
 * 1) yum update dracut

You should at least have dracut-009-15.fc15 for Fedora 15 or dracut-013-22.fc16 for Fedora 16.

Turn off any "hostonly" settings in /etc/dracut.conf*, if you turned on "hostonly".

Update the installed initramfs image for your current kernel, and instruct dracut to include the dracut module to convert your current filesystem:
 * 1) dracut --force --add convertfs

If your system has a split-off /usr, a separate mount point, and you don't know the kernel command line parameter to add, you can also try (dracut tries to generate them internally):
 * 1) dracut -H --force --add convertfs

If dracut detects ‘rd.convertfs’ on the kernel command line at bootup, it starts the filesystem conversion of the root filesystem. If it is already converted, it will just do nothing.

Change the following kernel commandline parameter directly in the bootloader menu, which is shown during bootup, or edit the line in   to remove ro and rhgb and append

Explanation of the options:

- remove “ro” (read only) - append “rw” (read write) to let dracut mount your root filesystem writeable - remove “rhgb” (Red Hat graphical boot) to disable the graphical bootsplash - append “rd.info” to get a more verbose output from dracut - append “rd.convertfs” to enable the /usr-move conversion script in dracut - append “enforcing=0” to disable SELinux enforcement

During bootup, dracut will now convert your filesystem, and /lib, /lib64, /bin and /sbin should then all be symbolic links to the corresponding directories in /usr.

After the conversion, the system needs to be immediately updated to Fedora 17. No packages from Fedora 16 or Fedora 15, or older rawhide packages must be installed anymore. Make sure to disable any Fedora 15 and Fedora 16 repositories in yum!

Any files with conflicting names, which the conversion could not resolve, will be backed up to files named *.usrmove~ residing in /usr/lib, /usr/lib64, /usr/bin and /usr/sbin.

Verify that dracut really completed the conversion. The log messages, which dracut has generated during bootup, can be retrieved with:
 * 1) dmesg | grep dracut

After a successful conversion, revert the changes made to the kernel command line in the bootloader config file /etc/grub*.cfg.

Then run,


 * 1) yum --releasever=17 update rpm
 * 2) rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__*
 * 3) rpm --rebuilddb
 * 4) yum --releasever=17 --disableplugin=presto --skip-broken distro-sync
 * 5) fixfiles onboot

After upgrading, all should be set and done.

Have fun with your system and say “Good bye” to /bin, /sbin, /lib, /lib64 and meet them in /usr.

Fedora 15 -> Fedora 16
First install the new fedora 16 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/A82BA4B7.txt

Next run and note the enabled services; you will need to re-enable these with  after you reboot, as the  settings aren't propagated into. See release notes for more details.

Upgrade all packages with

yum update yum yum clean all yum --releasever=16 --disableplugin=presto distro-sync

If your system uses a BIOS, or you installed Fedora via BIOS emulation mode on an EFI system (not native EFI mode), you can switch to Fedora 16's supported grub2 bootloader with the following instructions. If your system was installed by native EFI boot, do not switch to grub2, as its EFI support is still unreliable. Fedora 16's supported bootloader for native EFI installations is still grub-legacy, so you should simply continue to use the system without making any special changes to the bootloader configuration.

To switch to grub2, run the command, then proceed as described above with reinstalling the bootloader, but call instead of.

Known you upgrade -specific issues (for common problems, see references above):
 * Bug 743022 - F15->F16 yum update fails with IMSM (BIOS) raid

Fedora 14 -> Fedora 15
First install the new fedora 15 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/069C8460.txt

Upgrade all packages with

yum update yum yum clean all yum --releasever=15 --disableplugin=presto distro-sync


 * Do not run this from within an X terminal. Testing shows that X might hang while updating bitmap font packages.
 * There exist .drpms, but they don't match, due to a format change, so better disable the presto plugin by adding the option "--disableplugin=presto" (without quotes) when running yum.
 * The F15  client is not capable of attaching to F14   sessions.  Thus, if you want to run the upgrade under , you should either upgrade   itself in a separate operation or make a separate copy of   to use throughout the process.
 * mysql 5.5.20 shipped with F15 uses InnoDB as default storage engine. After upgrading, mysqld could refuse to start-up with error Unknown/unsupported storage engine: InnoDB if argument skip-innodb is given on command line or configuration file /etc/my.cnf. Workarounds are removing the line (InnoDB will be run as default engine), or adding default-storage-engine command options specifying some other storage engine.

VirtualBox guest upgrades
The steps above work perfectly for upgrading a Fedora 14 guest to Fedora 15, but you also need to remove the Guest Additions. If you forget, F14 -> F15 upgrades will seem to fail after the first reboot. If that happens, log in to the console with CTRL+ALT+F2 and reinstall the guest additions manually:

mount /dev/cdrom /media /bin/sh /media/VBoxLinuxAdditions.run reboot
 * 1) if /dev/cdrom does not exist, try:
 * 2) mount /dev/sr0 /media

Fedora 13 -> Fedora 14
First install the new fedora 14 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/97A1071F.txt

Upgrade all packages with

yum update yum yum clean all yum --releasever=14 distro-sync


 * If using VirtualBox from the Oracle repository, you must remove the VirtualBox-3.1 package before upgrading. After the upgrade is finished, install VirtualBox-3.2.

If you are running SELinux you may be locked out of your machine and required to boot to single user mode to fix up your machine. Redhat bug 702865 describes a fix as:     

If, after upgrading you want selinux back:     