[Fedora] Fedora PreUpgrade Utility and the proxy [lancsngfl]

[Arcath]

after the release of fedora 11 on tuesday ive been thinking how to update my servers that run fedora and my netbook.

After a little research i discovered a utility in fedora that basically swaps the f10 repos for the f11 repos and runs an update. This seemed perfect, the servers would be able to update and the only down time would be the reboot at the end. To test it i turned on my netbook made sure there was no important documents that needed backing up and then launched the utility.

The problem appears to be that it wont work behind the proxy, yum has its moments trying to find mirrors not filtered by the smart filter, but it normally comes across an accessbile mirror after no more than 3 attempts.

This utility seems unable to function behind the proxy, i will try the netbook again when i get home and have un filtered internet, but obviously thats no help to my servers.

Has anyone used this utility possibly to go 9 -> 10 behind the LancsNGFL proxy?

[Arcath]

its definatley the proxy, brought my netbook back to our office with un filtered internet and its set off no problems

[tmbenson]

Not sure if its the same principle with servers, im not too familiar with them.

Our school also runs through NGFL, i managed to bypass this for updates on a standalone desktop by editing the .Bashrc file.

Search the root folder for .bashrc and add the following to the end:

export http_proxy=http://proxy.lancsngfl.ac.uk:8080
export ftp_proxy=http://proxy.lancsngfl.ac.uk:8080

hopefully this should be sufficient.

Let me know,

Tom

[AdamK]

under /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo change the https to http for the mirrorlist.

Then try it. That solved it for me earlier!

Edit:
You'll need to do it to all the repos that you are using!

[Arcath]

ok i'll try those on the first server that needs updating, left my netbook updating in the office, wireless = mistake, 2,4GB and its been going for nearly 2.5 hours now

[AdamK]

Cool,

Let us know if it works. I had to do it on a new install just to update, but I'm guessing it was the same problem your having.

[tmbenson]

you can also execute the commands above within a shell, on an individual basis.

However if you do run it this way you will have to enter the export everytime you open a shell.

Just another way around proxy though.

Tom

[Arcath]

well it shafted my netbook it annaconda had a fail moment during the install after 60% of the packages had been updated so when it tried fedora 10 again it died horribly. so im going to format it and start again using ext4 instead of ext3.

Not sure what cuased it but "preupgrade" is the only way to do it. you can basically change all the 10s to 11s in your yum conf and then run an update.

[AdamK]

Gutted

You'll still need to do the yum thing above though with a fresh install so you can get yum to work through the proxy.
Obviously you still need to put the proxy into /etc/yum.conf too though.

Also there are still a few bugs in F11, one annoying one is that the network doesn't seem to activate on boot, so "ifup eth0" in terminal does the trick. Not sure if the updates fix that, didn't get to check before I went home last night, but will have a play today if I get time.

[Arcath]

yeah i had my netbook setup to swap to the proxy / turn it off depending on the IP that it has.

Yeah the network problems in f10 meant that i just used reservations in the DHCP server to set the IP on the servers