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I am trying (somewhat desperately) to convert an RHEL 4 server with no RedHat contract to CentOS 4 preparatory to upgrading it to CentOS 5 because "shellshock." I am following the instructions found here: http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/1496-convert-a-rhel4-linux-server-to-a-centos-4-server with appropriate changes for version (4.9) and architecture (i386.)

CentOS has historical files for 4.9 here:http://vault.centos.org/4.9/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/

I've gotten as far in the instructions as: yum install yum-plugin-protectbase.noarch yum-plugin-priorities.noarch yum-plugin-fastestmirror.noarch which fails with:

not using ftp, http[s], or file for repos, skipping - 4 is not a valid release or hasnt been released yet
Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: update
Error: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: update

I've never used yum before and I am a little bit desperate. Is there a way of using the material in vault.centos.org to complete this installation?

(I have tried researching this myself, I know about /etc/yum.repos.d but am very unsure how or whether the material that's available can be made to work for me. Any help will be very much appreciated!)

Edited to add: There is a reposdata directory in vault.centos.org. Not sure what to do with it, though.

Bob Brown
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  • If you've gotten that far, you should be able to skip directly to upgrading to CentOS 5, as long as the `redhat-release` RPM and the other Red Hat-specific RPMs are gone and the `centos-release` RPM is present. – Michael Hampton Sep 28 '14 at 20:09
  • That would be extremely good news! If I go off searching for "upgrade CentOS 4 to CentOS 5" am I likely to find what I need? – Bob Brown Sep 28 '14 at 20:12
  • Most likely. Though the process is basically just boot from the installation media and follow along. – Michael Hampton Sep 28 '14 at 20:13
  • Well, aarrgghh! I do not have physical access to the server. I'll get started downloading the CentOS 5 install media and see whether I can fix the access problem. (It *is* in the same city, at least.) Thank you *very* much for your help! – Bob Brown Sep 28 '14 at 20:15
  • You can upgrade to CentOS 7 remotely without console access, but 5 and 6 did not support this. You might also have a server with IPMI or a related technology which gives you remote access to the console, which you could also use to avoid having to deal with Atlanta traffic. :) – Michael Hampton Sep 28 '14 at 20:17
  • If I understand things right, CentOS 7 will not run on the i386 architecture. Getting where the server is will not be a problem. Getting past the locked door and the self-important so-and-sos is the problem. {sigh} – Bob Brown Sep 28 '14 at 20:22

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While it's not answering the upgrade question, I figured to freshen up the question with what I discovered, repo wise. I haven't ever upgraded EL4 to EL5 and actually skipped EL5 altogether, both RHEL and CentOS. Sorry.

Some years ago, I did get yum working on my RHEL box and when RHEL 4 was going away, I managed to semi-accidentally convert my system to CentOS 4.

Today, I successfully used https://vault.centos.org/4.9/CentOS-Base.repo on one of my CentOS 4 (formerly RHEL 4) systems.

That repo file has several repos and so I went through and put 'enabled=1' to them to see what else was available.

And for what it's worth, I also went looking for epel for EL4... the link from https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL was https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/epel/4/ and I was redirected to a mirror and drilled down to the i386 folder for the RPMs: https://pubmirror1.math.uh.edu/fedora-buffet/archive/epel/4/i386/

I wasn't able to yum install https://pubmirror1.math.uh.edu/fedora-buffet/archive/epel/4/i386/epel-release-4-10.noarch.rpm but i could wget it and then 'yum install epel-release-4-10.noarch.rpm'

Matthew Koundakjian
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Yes, an older repo does exist....again it is beyond EOL...

The location is:

 http://vault.centos.org/4.8/CentOS-Base.repo

Despite it saying v4.8....its version 4.9

I had to do use this repo to get a latest Centos 4 system to recover data from an old application. So this does work.

Enjoy

mdpc
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Upgrades from RHEL 4 to 5 are not supported; the same would apply to CentOS. You should backup the server and perform a fresh installation of your CentOS version of choice.

Although anaconda provides an option for upgrading from earlier major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11, Red Hat does not currently support this. More generally, Red Hat does not support in-place upgrades between any major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. (A major version is denoted by a whole number version change. For example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 are both major versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.) In-place upgrades across major releases do not preserve all system settings, services or custom configurations. Consequently, Red Hat strongly recommends fresh installations when upgrading from one major version to another.

sciurus
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  • ["Not supported" does not mean that it doesn't work.](http://serverfault.com/a/449113/126632) It means that Red Hat won't offer vendor support for such an upgraded system. We've discussed this here on SF before. – Michael Hampton Sep 29 '14 at 00:15
  • An upgrade isn't something that's magically possible. You have to write software that enables it. For RHEL 6 systems that software is preupgrade assistant and redhat-upgrade-tool. It doesn't exist until RHEL 6. Yum alone is not enough to do this safely. I wouldn't try an "upgrade" that way unless I was prepared to spend lots of time manually repairing the system and had the option of booting recovery media to facilitate those repairs. – sciurus Sep 30 '14 at 02:55