HOWTO: Remote upgrade RedHat 7.3 to RedHat 8.0 (CPANEL)
Note: THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR A PRODUCTION MACHINE. NEITHER I, NOR MY COMPANY, NOR THE FORUM WHERE THIS IS POSTED PROVIDE ANY WARRANTY FOR FOLLOWING THIS HOWTO.
To Upgrade RH 7.3 to RH 8 on a CPanel server, follow these steps. This involves "tricking" the up2date servers into thinking that you are running RH 8. Note that it is recommended that this be done before any sites/users are set up on the server, so that it is as fresh as possible.
1. Run rhn_register (if you haven't already) to register your box with RedHat for up2date.
2. dc /usr/local/src (or whatever source directory you use)
3. wget ftp://ftp.redhat.net/pub/redhat/linu...0-8.noarch.rpm
4. rpm -Uvh redhat-release-8.0-8.noarch.rpm - This will tell your system that it is RedHat 7.3 (at this point, that's all that happens).
5. up2date -p - this will send your system profile to the RHN, telling it that you have redhat 8. Now we can begin the update.
6. We need to begin the update now. This is done via up2date -i. You might want to run up2date -d first, because there are a LOT of updates, and it might be of benefit to download them first.
NOTE: This is where I got stuck. up2date broke halfway through, and I was stranded with some missing libraries before I could run it again. Luckily, I had those libraries on another redhat server, and could grab them and put them in the right include directories on the upgrade server. Keep that in mind.
7. If you use lilo, I cannot stress the importance at this point in running /sbin/lilo to update your config.
8. Reboot and pray. You are now running Redhat 8, but will need someone close in the datacenter in case your box doesn't come back up. Be prepared to have the box reformatted if your upgrade was not successful.
9. Once the box is back up, you will need to re-install CPanel to make sure that everything related to it is compiled correctly. You also now have GCC 3.2 instead of 2.96, which in and of itself is benefit enough for the upgrade. To reinstall CPanel:
cd /home
rm -rdf installd
wget http://layer1.cpanel.net/latest
sh latest
This will WIPE most of your CPanel configs. You will have to log into WHM as root and set up most of your configs again, as well as recompiling apache/php with any special options you chose.
Now it's clean-up time. A lot of programs that you installed on your box (if this isn't a clean box) will have to be re-compiled. In my case, it was the Jabber server, Shoutcast, and a few MUDs that I had running on this box.
Again, I would not recommend doing this on a box with clients on it ... but after you've done it, it should be stable enough to be a production server.
Good luck!
