How to upgrade dual-boot FC3 to FC7

[sedawk]

I have a dual boot (FC3/WinXP) laptop needs to be upgrade to (FC7/WinXP). I just want to upgrade FC3 system and remain all data/partition the same. When I threw in a FC7 Live CD and start "install on harddrive", it seems I only have option to remove current partitions and data before installing FC7. I wonder if my understanding is correct or not.

My current partitions are as follows:
MB start end
sda1 vfat 31 1 4
sda2 vfat 29369 5 3748
sda3 ext3 102 3749 3761
sda4 extended 8652 3762 4864
sda5 ext3 8142 3762 4799
sda6 swap 510 4800 4864

No matter which partition (except sda2, the WinXP partition) I tried to specify to be the installed, I got this error:

You have not defined a root partition (/), which is required for installation of Fedora to continue.

 

[geirendre]

Here are the basic steps I think you need to follow:
1. Make a backup off ALL data you cant afford to lose (including files in Windows)!!!
2. Boot up in FC3 and make a note of what each partition is used as.
The command

mount

will show you that.
3. Then in the Fedora8 installer you need to assign the partitions in the same way.
Chose to format all except the one with /home on it.
Hopefully you have /home on a seperate partition,
if you don't you will not be able to keep your files.
4. Now you should be able to install F8.

HTH

 

[sedawk]

If I need to backup WinXP partitions too, then I am stuck. There are many important files under vfat partitions that I don't want them to be formatted.

Is the upgrade process always so painful? Can I upgrade to other Linux Distro's that would be easier?

 

[IRudebwoy]

Opensuse and the enterprise variants have always, at least to me, been easy to upgrade in-place. I use gentoo primarily at home and work with a few opensuse and SLES boxen for certain canned software requirements. I've upgraded SLES from 8 to 9 without any hitches and 9 to 10 (in VMware) for testing purposes. Opensuse upgrades are just as easy. I went from 10.0 to 10.1 to 10.2 to 10.3 without any major issues.

With gentoo the distro "version" goes out the window. I can update my kernel and packages when I feel it's time, usually for security reasons.

As with any upgrade/install backup ALL your important data to CYA.

You might want to give the install CD's a try. I think there are more installation/upgrade options than the LiveCD.

Have Fun!

 

[zeland]

Have you considered upgrading directly via yum?
1. Remove all packages from 3rd party repos (livna, freshrpms, dribble etc).
2. Grab the F7 release package.
3. Update your yum repos: rpm -Uvh fedora-release-7-3.noarch.rpm
4. yum -y update
5. Take a nap and come back.

I've done this a number of times on different computer going from F6->F7, F6->F8, F7->F8, F7->F9-beta without much fuss.

--== Anything can go wrong. It's just a matter of how far wrong it will go till people think its right. ==--

 

[geirendre]

The only reason I said You should backup your Win-files was
in case you accidentaly formated or deleted the Win-partition.
If those are important files, you make backups.
If you don't, then their probably not important enough...