Upgrading ScientificLinux / TRIUMF

Unlike its parent, RedHat Enterprise Linux, ScientificLinux allows for sticking on a minor release.  That is, if you installed SL-5.1, your installation will not be automatically updated to 5.2, 5.3, etc. It is not necessary to update your release as security errata are maintained for all releases.  However, there are occasionally new features or packages that make upgrading worthwhile.  In addition, although the Scientific-Linux maintainers do an admirable job of providing security updates for earlier minor releases, they do this independently of Red Hat and there have been occasional problems with dependencies.  To avoid these, it is a good idea to not let your installtion get more than a couple of minor releases behind the latest.

Upgrade Procedure for Scientific-Linux 5

This procedure applies to systems that used  a TRIUMF kickstart to install Scientific-Linux 5.

Check your version of Scientific Linux with:

cat /etc/redhat-release

Check that your system uses the TRIUMF yum configuration:

rpm -q triumf-sl-yumconf

On 64-bit machines, remove 32-bit versions of perl and gaim.  These were included in SL-5.2 and earlier, but removed from upstream at SL-5.3.  Updates will fail unless the 32-bit versions are removed from 64-bit systems.

[  `uname -i` == "x86_64" ] && yum remove {perl,gaim,gaim-devel}.i386

Update the release rpm manually:

yum localupdate /triumfcs/mirror/SL/5/`uname -i`/SL/sl-release-5.*.rpm

Clean your yum cache, update yum, update the remaining packages then reboot.

yum clean all
yum update yum
yum update
reboot