Upgrading from 4.0 to 4.1

[Derick Centeno]

The short answer is no.

Although the directions previously posted provides a means of  
preserving settings, the fact is that Linux as an open source system  
(YDL is one distribution among many) has so many different contributors  
that arriving at a common approach to nearly anything is akin to  
getting the United Nations to agree on one point.  An agreed upon  
process to "preserve settings" from one version to another (across all  
distributions of Linux), may happen eventually, however it is not being  
discussed at the moment -- as far as I know.

A little history is needed to understand yum's value.

Before yum, one had to be very focussed and organized in researching  
and understanding how a program which one was interested in was exactly  
comprised.  Let's suppose I was interested in xmms or xine which are  
programs which play movies and music CDs.  If I was fortunate there  
would be a version which someone else compiled on their PowerPC which  
would allow me to download it and run it -- as is.  If I was less  
fortunate, or attempting to download it before the designers had  
completed a new version then I would have to probably build the program  
for myself -- from C language, raw code, from scratch on my own  
machine.  Now a little difficulty begins, because some programs need  
others, which themselves need others (and so on) -- these smaller  
programs are called in general, dependencies because the main program  
is dependent upon these smaller programs to work.  Dependencies for a  
program can be as essential as traffic lights, police or fire  
department for a city.  Dependencies themselves of course do different  
things and themselves often have different authors, who are not related  
and have no association to the designers or design team of the main  
program -- other than the fact that without that dependency the main  
program won't run with the features one wants or finds valuable.

The challenge to all this gets a little clearer when you realize that  
each dependency also has to be compiled into an executeable and bundled  
with the main program.  Also some dependencies need to be processed and  
recognized by the main program in a certain precise sequence.  Consider  
that some programs don't use the same dependencies and others have no  
dependencies while others don't appear to have any until in running or  
compiling the program you discover that a process cannot continue  
without a dependency.

Now we are ready to consider what yum does.  One of the components of  
yum is yum.conf which is a file which yum refers to as a database where  
specific locations of programs are listed which yum can refer to and  
research upon command.  Within yum.conf one can list as many mirrors as  
one wishes.  The advantage to doing so is that sometimes a program or  
dependency is in one location or and not in another.  Yum can search  
these locations as fast as the processing and broadband speed allow.  I  
have found it to be very heady stuff that yum can search 5 or more  
mirrors spread across the planet check for all dependencies for each  
program and install it flawlessly in the correct order and sequence  
time after time.  And yum can check for updates of dependencies and or  
the main program and make the changes it is supposed to upon install.

yum will install programs and dependencies according to the version of  
the install it has the instructions for.  Usually each version of YDL  
has a version of yum specifically looking for that version or a range  
of updates functional between releases of major versions of YDL.

Best wishes...

On Jun 11, 2006, at 11:23 PM, Ted Goranson wrote:

> Derick Centeno wrote on 6/11/06:
>> Hi Ted:
>> Take a look at this page.  Hope it helps...
>>
>> http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/solutions/ydl_4.1/kde- 
>> migration.shtml
>
> Thanks Derick. I saw that of course. What I'm looking for is a more  
> fundamental newb1e question. I have 4.0 installed. I have 4.1 on  
> disks. Is there a way to upgrade without losing settings.
>
> I really don't understand yum, but it seems that what you can update  
> to is related to the servers you point to.
>
> So is it true that with a default yum file, I can only update to 4.0x?
> -- 
> __________
> Ted Goranson
> Sirius-Beta