RHEL5.5 Migrate to centos5.5, some RH remnants, questions

dunwell · Post by **dunwell** » 2010/12/21 14:43:18

I have run into two issues with a migration to centos. I did read the FAQ's and tried
various searches to the fora but did not find solutions to these issues. Perhaps it is
my failure of familiarity with the centos site.

I am not a true sysadmin but I am somewhat familiar with RHEL and daily work
with it, primarily installing and maintaining 3rd party software packages

I have a single server on a Dell Poweredge 840 that was up to date with Red Hat.
I did a migration from RHEL5.5 to centos 5.5 following the instructions I found at

[code]
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/MigrationGuide
and
http://www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/documentations-a-howto/213-how-to-jul-convert-rhel-5-to-centos-5
[/code]
Specifically I did the following:

- created a dd disk image and set it aside as a fail backup disk
As root in the root home:
mkdir centos
cd centos
yum clean all
At this point I tried to do the wget type things described int the
by-hand instructions but they kept
failing with errors about not finding the files or unknown errors.
So instead I opened a browser and went to
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.5/os/i386/
I located below that
RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5
and saved it locally to the centos dir off root homw.
Then I switched to
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5.5/os/i386/CentOS/
and saved off locally
centos-release-5-5.el5.centos.1.i386.rpm
centos-release-notes-5.5-0.i386.rpm
yum-3.2.22-26.el5.centos.noarch.rpm
yum-updatesd-0.9-2.el5.noarch.rpm
Later there were dependencies so I had to also download
yum-fastestmirror-1.1.16-14.el5.centos.1.noarch.rpm

Then I continued with stuff from the web page info
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/MigrationGuide

cp /etc/redhat-release /etc/redhat-release-saved
rpm -e --nodeps redhat-release-notes redhat-release yum-rhn-plugin redhat-logos

[NOTE: It turned out that the logos are needed for the login screen so maybe
don't include those in the future. see questions below.]

I switched back to the by-hand guide
http://www.unixmen.com/linux-tutorials/documentations-a-howto/213-how-to-jul-convert-rhel-5-to-centos-5
and did
rpm ?import RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5
rpm -Uvh *.rpm [note: the guide said to use -force but that is a bad option now.]
yum update
yum upgrade
reboot

I am seeing two main issues of remaining RHEL type files/programs, and one general question

1) As mentioned above, removal of the RH themes made the login screen throw an error(s)
complaining that it could not find various of the .png file in /usr/share/gdm/themes/RHEL/...
and then fail to the simple default login screen.
As a stop-gap I just copied these back in from another RHEL5 machine. I would have expeceted
that a migration would include replacement of the RH theme with a centos one of some sort.
Please advise as to how I get in some sort of centos theme for the login and in general to
replace the "shadow man" type page logos. If this is available as a web page please point
that out

2) I am now seeing in my daily log report from Logwatch 7.3 (03/24/06) up2date failures of the
form
--------------------- up2date Begin ------------------------

**Unmatched Entries**
RPM error. The message was:
RPM error. The message was:
RPM error. The message was:
RPM error. The message was:
RPM error. The message was:
RPM error. The message was:

---------------------- up2date End -------------------------

I am assuming here that this is some yum RPM auto-update that is being implemented somewhere and
it is still trying to go out to my RH account which now has expired entitlements. Perhaps it is something
else, I am not knowledgeable enough with this to know. Any suggestions as to how to locate this updater
and make it access centos for updates appreciated.

Last of all, I did this migration on Friday Dec. 17th. I have since off and on tried to run
yum update
but it never finds any packages marked for update.

> yum update
Setting up Update Process
No Packages marked for Update

With RHEL it seemed that there were several a week, often more. So I wonder if perhaps yum appears
to be working but actually is not. And advice at to how to verify the operation of yum appreciated.

Many thanks in advance for any help provided,
Alan D.

Post by **toracat** » 2010/12/21 15:26:18

[quote]
dunwell wrote:

Then I continued with stuff from the web page info
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/MigrationGuide

cp /etc/redhat-release /etc/redhat-release-saved
rpm -e --nodeps redhat-release-notes redhat-release yum-rhn-plugin redhat-logos
rpm -ivh \
[NOTE: It turned out that the logos are needed for the login screen so maybe
don't include those in the future. see questions below.]

I switched back to the by-hand guide
[/quote]
Welcome to CentOS.

You apparently missed some steps when you switched to other guide. The wiki has this line (among other things):

rpm -ivh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/5/os/i386/CentOS/redhat-logos-4.9.99-11.el5.centos.noarch.rpm

That should give you CentOS version of the redhat-logos package.

dunwell · Post by **dunwell** » 2010/12/21 16:14:01

[b]*Sigh*[/b] Thank you for pointing that out. It was even in my checklist but not done. It was my intent to download and run by hand all the rpms, clearly I failed in [i]that[/i] endeavor, mixing the information on the two sites. I'm remote just now and will run that from the console and do a reboot this evening and post back with results.

Thank you again.

dunwell · Post by **dunwell** » 2010/12/21 20:33:14

Some additional data on my question 2) relating to the rpm errors.

Looking in /var/log/up2date log shows an expanded detail of the error ~ every 4 hours of the form:

[code]
[Tue Dec 21 09:16:27 2010] up2date RPM error. The message was:
Could not determine what version of Red Hat Linux you are running.
If you get this error, try running

rpm --rebuilddb
[/code]
I did try the rebuild but it seemed to make no difference. Note the message thinks it is trying to find RH Linux, not centos. Much googling has not brought enlightenment to me, any pointers/suggestions appreciated.

Alan D.

Post by **toracat** » 2010/12/22 02:22:34

Please show us the output from:

rpm -qa | grep rhn

and

ls -l /var/lib/rpm

dunwell · Post by **dunwell** » 2010/12/22 16:41:38

[quote]
toracat wrote:
Please show us the output from:

rpm -qa | grep rhn

and

ls -l /var/lib/rpm[/quote]

Toracat, as root they are:
-------------- screen clip --------
> rpm -qa |grep rhn
rhn-check-0.4.20-33.el5_5.4
rhn-setup-gnome-0.4.20-33.el5_5.4
rhn-client-tools-0.4.20-33.el5_5.4
rhn-setup-0.4.20-33.el5_5.4
rhnlib-2.5.22-3.el5_5.1
rhnsd-4.7.0-5.el5
847 dunwellguitar3:/home/dunwell
> ls -l /var/lib/rpm
total 50696
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 5517312 Dec 21 09:01 Basenames
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 12288 Dec 21 09:01 Conflictname
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24576 Dec 22 09:27 __db.001
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1318912 Dec 22 09:27 __db.002
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 450560 Dec 22 09:27 __db.003
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 2109440 Dec 21 09:01 Dirnames
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 5324800 Dec 21 09:01 Filemd5s
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 28672 Dec 21 09:01 Group
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 28672 Dec 21 09:01 Installtid
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 45056 Dec 21 09:01 Name
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 37982208 Dec 21 09:01 Packages
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 331776 Dec 21 09:01 Providename
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 102400 Dec 21 09:01 Provideversion
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 12288 Dec 17 09:36 Pubkeys
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 409600 Dec 21 09:01 Requirename
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 217088 Dec 21 09:01 Requireversion
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 81920 Dec 21 09:01 Sha1header
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 53248 Dec 21 09:01 Sigmd5
-rw-r--r-- 1 rpm rpm 12288 Dec 14 15:57 Triggername
---------------------

also
> rpm -qa |grep centos
redhat-logos-4.9.99-11.el5.centos
I thought I'd see more with that.

I did install the rpm for redhat-logos-4.9.99-11.el5.centos last night and did a restart. This now gives a flash of the flower screen after post, the CentOS logo on the red information screesn while booting, but the login screen is still RH and the Shadow Man logo is still on the main pages of the GUI interface.

Note that in the earlier install I did an rpm -e of redhat-logos but later put back all the .png files into the themes subdir for RHEL. I have not yet tried just moving the RHEL subdir below themes to be something else like OldRHEL so the files won't be found, thinking that might break some other screens. I can re-run the rpm -e for that
rpm -e redhat-logos
but thought I'd check the wisdome here first.

TIA,
Alan D

Post by **toracat** » 2010/12/22 16:54:53

CentOS does not use any of the rhn-* packages. Running the [b]rpm -e[/b] command [b]without[/b] the --nodeps option would have removed those packages.

If you still have problem with updating the system using yum, please post again with the error message you get.

dunwell · Post by **dunwell** » 2010/12/22 22:36:04

[quote]
toracat wrote:
If you still have problem with updating the system using yum, please post again with the error message you get.
[/quote]
Not an error as such with yum update, just that it never finds anything to update:

[code]
> yum -v update
Config time: 0.047
Yum Version: 3.2.22
Setting up Package Sacks
rpmdb time: 0.000
Setting up Update Process
Updating Everything
Building updates object
Setting up Package Sacks
Setting up Package Sacks
up:Obs Init time: 0.001
up:simple updates time: 0.000
up:obs time: 0.000
up:condense time: 0.000
updates time: 0.407
No Packages marked for Update
[/code]
Can it be true that there have been no updates since the 17th when I did the conversion?

However I do continue to see errors in /var/log/up2date every four hours:

[code]
[Wed Dec 22 08:03:10 2010] up2date RPM error. The message was:
Could not determine what version of Red Hat Linux you are running.
If you get this error, try running

rpm --rebuilddb

[Wed Dec 22 12:03:11 2010] up2date RPM error. The message was:
Could not determine what version of Red Hat Linux you are running.
If you get this error, try running

rpm --rebuilddb
[/code]
where something still seems to be trying to connect to red hat. This process that creates the up2date log (???) must be different from yum. Yes? If so what is the process and how do I configure it to point to centos?

Question on protocol for the forum; I posted this with two questions. If one is resolved but not the other should I start a new thread with that single question or continue under the same thread till all is resolved and then post as such? I did not see anything about this in the forum guidlines and I don't want to offend protocol.

Alan D.

[Moderator edited to insert [i]code[/i] tags to aid readability.]

Post by **toracat** » 2010/12/22 22:50:37

The last update on my CentOS box is :

[b]Dec 16 04:55:18 Updated: openssl-0.9.8e-12.el5_5.7.i686[/b]

Regarding the up2date message you are seeing ... the rhnsd service must be still running. Try stopping and removing it:

[code]
[b]service rhnsd stop
chkconfig rhnsd off
rpm -e rhnsd[/b]
[/code]

AlanBartlett · Post by **AlanBartlett** » 2010/12/23 00:27:47

[quote]
Question on protocol for the forum; I posted this with two questions. If one is resolved but not the other should I start a new thread with that single question or continue under the same thread till all is resolved and then post as such? I did not see anything about this in the forum guidlines and I don't want to offend protocol.
[/quote]
My advice is to continue in this thread until all issues are resolved [i]or[/i] that you are advised otherwise. ;-)

CentOS