SME Server 8

Status: Beta

SME Server Version 8 will be the next major version of SME Server, and will involve upgrading the base to CentOS 5. SME Server 8.0beta5 is based on CentOS 5.4.

See the Release Announcement for Beta5.

A copy of the latest CD image can be downloaded here.

Testing

All users are encouraged to test, see our draft quality assurance testing page for tasks SME8.0 QA

All testing should be based on the released version plus updates from smeupdates-testing.

Considerations before installing

Please, please any issues report to our bug tracker under the SME Server 8 section

This way all problems can be fixed as quickly, early and efficiently as possible by the development team.

Since SME Server 8.0 is still beta no contribs will be released. Once the Release Candidate status is reached contribs will be released for contrib owners to check if their packages need updating. For testing of contribs in advance of release see SME8.0 Contribs QA

Upgrade paths

Check for rpms installed from outside the standard yum repositories

/sbin/e-smith/audittools/newrpms

CD

After Upgrading

Reset repositories to SME 8, see below, bug 5705

Yum

Check for known issues, here SME8.0 QA and at open bugs for SME 8 in bugzilla.

Note especially Bug 5316, detach all USB drives, ie your backup

Pointing repositories to SME 8

Update the MirrorList property to point to the sme8 lists...

db yum_repositories print | grep '^sme' | cut -d= -f1 | while read repo
do
    db yum_repositories setprop $repo MirrorList \
    http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/mirrorlist/$repo-8
done

Expand your yum.conf...

signal-event yum-modify

Performing the upgrade

	Note:
	You are advised to only upgrade clean machines, e.g. without contribs or other modifications.

1. Clean out the yum cache so upgrades work: rm -rf /var/cache/yum/*
2. Perform the upgrade: yum --disablerepo=smeextras --enablerepo=smeupdates-testing upgrade
3. Remove outdated rpm database and rebuild it (zeros not O's) rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db.00* rpm --rebuilddb
4. Reset yum updates repositories to defaults, (will delete local changes) mv /home/e-smith/db/yum_repositories /home/e-smith/db/yum_repositories.pre8 /etc/e-smith/events/actions/initialize-default-databases
5. Perform a post-upgrade and reboot signal-event post-upgrade signal-event reboot

Potential issues that may arise

If you are running a 7.0 system you may need to upgrade smeserver-yum.

1. Check which version of smeserver-yum you are running: rpm -q smeserver-yum
2. If it isn't at least 1.2.0-25.el4.sme install an updated version: rpm -Uvh \ http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/releases/obsolete/7.1/smeos/i386/CentOS/RPMS/smeserver-yum-1.2.0-25.el4.sme.noarch.rpm \ http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/releases/obsolete/7.1/smeos/i386/CentOS/RPMS/yum-plugin-fastestmirror-0.2.4-3.c4.noarch.rpm

If you receive the following error while trying to upgrade:

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Missing Dependency: yum-metadata-parser is needed by package yum

Solve it by installing the correct version of yum-metadata-parser:

rpm -Uvh --oldpackage \
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/releases/7/smeos/i386/SME/RPMS/yum-metadata-parser-1.0-8.el4.centos.i386.rpm

If you a < 7.2 system and have errors with yum upgrade try without '--disablerepo=smeextras'

yum --enablerepo=smeupdates-testing upgrade

Additional steps and potential changes

VMWare

VMware-server installations need some tweaking at this stage, see VMware_server_on_SME8.0beta5.

Problems and bugs

If you have any bug issues with upgrading please open a new SME Server 8.x file a bug here

Major Changes

• CentOS 5 has dropped support for i586 and therefore SME Server 8 will not work on i586 hardware. See bugzilla:2845. i586 hardware means processors before and including Intel Pentium, Pentium MMX; AMD K5, K6, K6-II, K6-III and Via C3. i686 architecture processors are Intel Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III; AMD Athlon, Athlon XP and later.