upgrading gcc and glibc

[Bill Campbell]

On Sun, Jul 06, 2003 at 05:42:28PM -0700, Net Llama! wrote:
>Greetings,
>I've got a box that currently has gcc-2.95.3 and glibc-2.2.5 on it.  I'd 
>really like to upgrade both to the latest stable versions, which i fear is 
>a non-trivial exercise.
>
>I've manually upgraded glibc in the past, but that was going from 2.1.x to 
>2.2.x.  From what i'm reading, that is cake compared to going to glibc-3.x. 
>  I've also upgraded gcc in the past, but that too was a minor version 
>upgrade, and not 2.x to 3.x.
>
>Anyone have any SxS type material for doing this stuff?  I'd really rather 
>not wreck this box flying blind.

We prepare for this in advance by creating a spare partition on the hard
drive initially for a backup of the root partition, later for the next
upgrade.  Backing up the root partition is pretty easy, pretty much mount
it, copy everything except /etc/fstab over, and tweak /etc/fstab to switch
``/'' and ``/backroot'.  Configure grub or lilo appropriately so you have a
fallback after shooting yourself in the foot.

Bill
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