Inplace upgrade from RHEL 5.x to RHEL 6.x

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In-place upgrade from RHEL 5.x to RHEL 6.x
''' Below is the list of steps to get in-place upgrade from RHEL 5.5 to RHEL 6.2.

Disclaimer: The packages I installed in RHEL 5.5 and RHEL 6.2 is minimal set (say some 650+ packages) and the below steps correspond to upgrade from minimal set RHEL 5.5 to RHEL 6.2. While the below steps should be sufficient to make upgraded RHEL 6.2 to up and running, there might be other rpm upgrades which might fail. The installation logs can be looked into to rectify them on case to case basis.

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RPM magic number differs
 Problem''': The first and foremost hurdle is the rpm support. The magic number used in RHEL 5 is changed in RHEL 6. This means the existing rpm utility installed in RHEL 5.5 cannot be used to install any of the RHEL 6.2 package. If you try to install, following error is thrown: /media/Packages # rpm -U --nodeps zip-3.0-1.el6.x86_64.rpm warning: zip-3.0-1.el6.x86_64.rpm: Header V3 RSA/SHA256 signature: NOKEY, key ID fd431d51 error: unpacking of archive failed: cpio: Bad magic /media/Packages #

Solution: We need ‘rpm’ and related packages of RHEL 6.2 to be installed in the RHEL 5.5 first and then use it to install all other packages of RHEL 6.2. Following are the RHEL 6.2 packages which need to be installed/copied manually in RHEL 5.5 to proceed further: ''   •	rpm-* •	popt •	glibc-* •	libcap •	db4 •	xz-libs •	lua''

Extract the above packages from RHEL 6.2 repository or DVD using below command: ''   mkdir rpm_6.2/ cd rpm_6.2/ rpm2cpio /path/to/ .rpm | cpio –idmv tar zcvf ../rpm_for_6.2.tar.gz *			;# Notice tar file created in parent dir'' The tar ball has all the RHEL 6.2 rpms required to install the other RHEL 6.2 RPMs.

Copy the created tar file in RHEL 5.5 machine and extract it from “/”.

''   cd  / tar xvf  /path/to/ rpm_for_6.2.tar.gz''

There is one other small step required to make the rpm work. The old libpopt libraries are still referred to by the new rpm binary as the /usr/lib64 path is precedent over /lib64/ dir. The old libraries are no longer required and can just be removed.

''cd /usr/lib64/ ls –l libpopt.so* rm –f libpopt.so*''

Check the rpm version

''/home # rpm –version RPM version 4.8.0 /home #''

Now we have rpm package of RHEL 6.2 in place of older 4.4.x version of rpm package of RHEL 5.5.

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Getting Installation order list and installing packages
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Traverse to dir where the RHEL 6.2 packages are available and execute below command to get the order of rpm packages rpm –Uvv *.rpm 2>&1 | tee pkg_order.log

The command would read all the packages and provide us the order in which the packages are to be installed (In log file pkg_order.log). Extract the package names and write it in a separate file, say, order_file.txt

The upgrade is triggered by installing RHEL 6.2 rpm packages one-by-one in the same order as given out by previous step.

''cd /path/to/rh6.2pkgs/ for Pkg in $(cat order_file.txt) do       rpm –Uvv  --force  --nodeps  $Pkg  2>&1 | tee –a install_logs.log done'' '''

Kernel upgrade and creation of initramfs
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Problem: While installing kernel package, the creation of initramfs fails. The installation of kernel package itself will be successful but the scriptlet results in error and thereby failing to create the initramfs under /boot. The failure happens because of the segfault while executing /bin/mktemp.

''+ NEWKERNARGS= + grep -q crashkernel + '[' 1 -ne 0 ']' + NEWKERNARGS=--kernel-args=crashkernel=auto + /sbin/new-kernel-pkg --package kernel --mkinitrd --dracut --depmod --update 2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64 --kernel-args=crashkernel=auto mktemp[12333]: segfault  rsp: 0000xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx x  xxxxxxxxxxxx chmod: cannot access `': No such file or directory usage: plymouth [ --verbose | -v ] { --targetdir | -t }  cp: `/etc/ld.so.conf' and `/etc/ld.so.conf' are the same file cp: `/etc/ld.so.conf.d' and `/etc/ld.so.conf.d' are the same file

gzip: stdout: No space left on device E: dracut: creation of /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64.img failed mkinitrd failed + exit 1 D: (null): waitpid(8650) rc 8650 status 100 secs 127.394 warning: %posttrans(kernel-2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 1''

Solution: Obviously something is wrong with the mktemp. The kernel that is loaded in memory is that of RHEL 5.5 (2.6.18-x) and it expects mktemp version corresponding to RHEL 5.5 whereas the currently installed mktemp is version 8.x which is installed from coreutils package of RHEL 6.2.

Extract mktemp-xxx.rpm package of RHEL 5.5 to get mktemp binary. While the kernel package is upgraded, the mktemp of RHEL 5.5 should be available in /bin/ so that the mktemp does not crask and scriptlet succeeds in creating the initramfs for RHEL 6.2.

''cd /home/mktemp_5.5/ rpm2cpio /path/to/mktemp-xxx.x86_64.rpm  |  cpio  -idmv mv  /bin/mktemp   /bin/mktemp_6.2 cp –p /home/mktemp_5.5/mktemp   /bin/''

Once the kernel package is installed successfully, the mktemp binaries are to be swapped back to have the correct mktemp version that corresponds to RHEL 6.2

mv /bin/mktemp_6.2   /bin/mktemp

Once complete, reboot the system and see those beautiful messages of RHEL 6.2 scroll through screen.

Lakshmivaragan HCL Technologies Ltd, Chennai, India lakshmivaraganm at hcl dot com