Half a Page of Scribbled Linux

Start with a copy of the current Fedora Core 4 system and upgrade the copy to Fedora Core 6. (These steps are easiest to do with a Knoppix live CD because none of the partitions will be in use.)

Old Fedora Core 4 Layout

Partition	Label	Size
/dev/hda1	boot	100MB
/dev/hdb8	fc4root2	10GB
/dev/hdb9	fc4home2	5GB

Create new partitions using QTParted:

New Fedora Core 6 Layout

Partition	Label	Size
/dev/hda6	fc6root	15GB
/dev/hda7	fc6home	10GB

Boot is left alone. Note the new partions are larger, so after we copy the old partition's data to the new one, the file system will have to be resized.


# dd if=/dev/hdb8 of=/dev/hda6 bs=1024k
# tune2fs -L fc6root /dev/hda6
# resize2fs /dev/hda6
# dd if=/dev/hdb9 of=/dev/hda7 bs=1024k
# tune2fs -L fc6home /dev/hda7
# resize2fs /dev/hda7
# cd /mnt
# mkdir fc6root
# mount /dev/hda6 /mnt/fc6root

Edit /boot/grub.conf. Copy current "FC4" entry to "Test FC6" and change "root" on kernel line to point to new /dev/hda6.
Edit /mnt/fc6root/etc/fstab and change / and home to point to new partitions /dev/hda6 and /dev/hda7, respectively.

Reboot and check out Test FC6 before running the Zod (Fedora Core 6) upgrade.

Well, there's something I overlooked. The boot partition is shared so I can run the same Grub with different versions of the OS. However, when Fedora upgrades the new FC6 partition, it has RPM remove the old versions of the kernel from /boot, which disables the old FC4 installation. I suppose the best way to handle this is to make backup copies of what's in /boot before starting the upgrade. After the upgrade, boot into FC6 and restore the kernel(s) for the old installation and make sure the old installation still works.