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 8.0beta4 is based on CentOS 5.3.

See the Release Announcement for Beta4.

A copy of the Beta4 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. (Feb 2010 provides Centos 5.4 / SME 8.0 beta 5)

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

CD

Upgrading from CD should work fine. If not file a bug here .

Yum

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.

Clean out the yum cache so upgrades work: rm -rf /var/cache/yum/*
Perform the upgrade: if you have errors try without '--disablerepo=smeextras' yum --disablerepo=smeextras --enablerepo=smeupdates-testing upgrade
Remove outdated rpm database and rebuild it (zeros not O's) rm -f /var/lib/rpm/__db.00* rpm --rebuilddb
Reset yum updates repositories to defaults mv /home/e-smith/db/yum_repositories /home/e-smith/db/yum_repositories.pre8 /etc/e-smith/events/actions/initialize-default-databases
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.

Check which version of smeserver-yum you are running: rpm -q smeserver-yum
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

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.

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