[log in to unmask] wrote:
> I am running Scientific Linux 4.3 and I want to upgrade to the latest 
> version 5.4. Now, I have downloaded the two .iso files. If I install these,
>  will I be able to keep my existing file system, or will the volume in my 
> hard drive be erased, and hence I will have to save my programs and files 
> somewhere else.

if you select *upgrade*, it _should_ be go well.

have a look at;
  https://www.scientificlinux.org/documentation/howto/upgrade.5x

> In addition, what else can go wrong when doing this? (I will not have a 
> problem with insufficient disk space.

nothing that i am aware of. in fact, other than time frame, for me, it was as
simple and smooth as doing a yum update.


while i am at it, my thanks to scientific linux team for all their work in
making upgrade so easy and trouble free.

i would have said so sooner, but i have been busy rebuilding 2 fedora systems
and '/home' in this box and one other, when i ran an update, and tried to
upgrade them from f11 to f12.

system got trash in that it clobbered superblock on 3 hard drives along with
trashing hard drives to force me to rebuild system from blocks of what i found
in fsck.ext3 in recover mode.

i did have backups that made '/home' recover easier, but there where several
bad backup dvd's that checked good when they were made.


to that end, be sure that you back your system and '/home' and verify backups
before you do any upgrade. regardless of what distrib it is.

hth.

later.

-- 

peace out.

tc,hago.

g
.

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