Upgrade Mageia 2 or Mageia3 to Mageia 4

Back in the early days of Linux, the changes to the OS were so dramatic that even when updating withing the same distro, in-place point release updates were problematic enough and it was always recommended that a major version release be done from scratch. There were just too many major changes to the underlying subsystems and package naming conventions. Doing an in-place update was just asking for trouble.

Modern distros have matured quite a bit although there are occasionally some major subsystem changes being made. Yet it's never been easier to do an in-pace major version upgrade.

I just did the upgrade on several Mageia3 systems and the results were consistent and satisfactory, not to mention simple.

Step 0.

Always backup critical information. Have a Mageia3 recovery disc on hand.

From GUI

Step 1.

$ sudo mgaapplet-upgrade-helper --new_distro_version=4

Done.


From CLI

Step 1.

Fully update the packages you now have installed.

$ sudo urpmi --auto-update --auto -v


Step 2.

Remove all the existing Mageia4 repositories.

$ sudo urpmi.removemedia -av

Step 3.

Add the Mageia4 repositories. (All on one line.)

$ sudo urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist 'http://mirrors.mageia.org/api/mageia.4.i586.list'

Step 4.

Update the packages

$ sudo urpmi --replacefiles --auto-update --auto -v

Step 5.

Reboot. You'll be using a new kernel, new glibc and so on.

$ sudo shutdown -r now

Step 6.

Run the package update command again. It should return with no packages needing updating.

Done.  But . . . .

Do Some Checking.

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
$ cat /etc/issue

Those commands should return the information that you are running Mageia4. I did have an issue on one machine and $ sudo urpmi mageia-release-common fixed it. You can also edit these files to change the version number.