[Mageia-dev] Switching from Cooker to Cauldron?

[Per Øyvind Karlsen]

2011/6/9 Christiaan Welvaart <cjw at daneel.dyndns.org>:
> On Thu, 9 Jun 2011, Olav Vitters wrote:
>
>> I'm guessing if I attempt to switch to Cauldron, it likely cannot read
>> the rpm5 database.
>>
>> I can only think of a few things:
>> 1. Create a new partition, install Mageia 1 on that, switch to Cauldron,
>> install all the non-automatic installed packages, copy stuff from the
>> Cauldron partition to the existing one
>> -> Not too sure about the copying. I've modified various things over the
>> years (e.g. special Postfix setup and so on)
>
> You can look for all config files you changed (probably using an rpm
> command) and copy/merge those on the new system. Can be quite a bit of work.
>
>> 2. Just attempt to install Cauldron, forcefully reinstall the packages,
>> and ignore the rpm difference
>> -> I think this will fail though
>
> You can wipe out the package database, but then after installing all
> non-automatic installed packages, you'll probably have many files
> unaccounted for (not owned by any installed package). Not a good idea
> probably. Also all pre/post install scripts will be ran in new install mode
> instead of upgrade mode. I did something like this with a VM (that isn't
> very important to me) and I'm still finding new problems in it (but it works
> anyway).
>
>> 3. Somehow export/downgrade the 'rpm5' info to rpm4. Is this possible
>> and how?
>
> There is supposedly a script that can convert the package database both ways
It's implemented in C using rpm & berkeley db api, so it's not a script.. ;)
> in mdv, but nobody probably tried this yet.
Not true, the functionality has even been implemented to be automatically
used when installing older releases with urpmi.

We're actually relying on it when installing older releases into clean
chroots on
cooker for building backports. :)

The code in question should be trivial to swipe and implement in Mageia, I did
offer to help with this previously, but with no interest..
--
Regards,
Per Øyvind