Upgrading CentOS 6.3 to 6.5

Question

[Note: I manually moved this here from StackOverflow]

I'm trying to update CentOS 6.3 to 6.5. If it matters, I'm doing this inside VBox 4.3.8, on a Mac running OSX 10.9.2.

Following directions found on if-not-true-then-false.com:

What version am I running?

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS 6.3 release (Final)

$ uname -r
2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64

Okay, let's try updating:

$ yum clean all
$ yum update glibc* yum* rpm* python*
$ yum update

That all seemed to go well. (I'd paste the output but due to the inability to export cut-and-paste buffer, it's impractical -- in fact, what I'm ultimately trying to do is install VBOXADDITIONS to enable just that, which requires a 6.5 kernel.)

$ reboot
:
$ cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS release 6.3 (Final)

Hmm. Well, I don't loik that.

$ yum info kernel

Indicates that two kernels are "installed" - .279, and .436. The former is highlighted in such a way to suggest that it is the one currently running. (I tried this whole thing yesterday, which is probably why there is a staged .436 version.)

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? Or what I may be confused about? The whole purpose of this exercise is to be able to install the VBox Guest Additions 4.3.8, which require CentOS 6.5 (6.3 being obsolete).

Solution

Check GRUB's menu.lst file, /boot/grub/menu.lst and make sure you're pointing to the new kernel you just installed. It should be the first one in the list and the default value above should be set to 0, indicating the 1st one in the list.

Also I'd use the command yum upgrade as opposed to yum update.

I typically do this:

$ yum clean all
$ yum update
$ yum upgrade
$ reboot

I'm assuming you got your steps from this tutorial, titled: Upgrade to CentOS 6.5 from CentOS 6.4/6.3/6.2/6.1/6.0. If you scroll down into the comments you'll see a question about how to do the upgrade from 6.3 to 6.5. You need to use the steps as I've described to do that.

Comments

[slm]

6.3 isn't obsolete, CentOS & RHEL releases are supported for 7+ years, typically 10 per major release number.

[Chap]

@slm: At the moment, I can't find where I saw that assertion made, but the problem seems to be that, using VirtualBox 4.3.8 to run CentOS 6.3, the VBOXADDITIONS 4.3.8 won't install. So perhaps what I read was something to the effect that CentOS 6.3 was obsolete as far as VBOXAdditions 4.3.8 was concerned.

[Chap]

There isn't a file called menu.lst in /boot/grub/.

[Chap]

Unfortunately, that tutorial uses the terms 'update' and 'upgrade' interchangeably, at least in prose. Not a great choice for two terms with different technical meanings. +1 for highlighting the distinction.

[slm]

@Chap - strange I have that file on 6.5. Check for /boot/grub/grub.conf.

[slm]

@Chap - The only real difference is that upgrade includes the switch --obsoletes, which update does not.

[Chap]

grub.conf does exist. I'm back to a fresh version of 6.3. Running yum upgrade caused my CentOS to fail to reboot (froze just before showing the desktop). The CentOS is on a disk image provided in a Cloudera course I took, and it's preconfigured with lots of Hadoop-related stuff, which may well be incompatible with 6.5.

[slm]

@Chap - that's very likely that those packages won't be available in 6.5

[Chap]

By "those packages" are you referring to what I called "Hadoop-related stuff"? One final question: after running the update (not upgrade) described in "Upgrade to CentOS 6.5 from CentOS 6.4/6.3/6.2/6.1/6.0", I see that /boot/grub/ contains lots of pairs of things (e.g. vmlinuz) with "279" and "431" in their filename. /boot/grub/grub.conf only mentions 279. Do 279 and 431 bear any relationship to 6.3 and 6.5?

[slm]

@Chap - yes the hadoop packages. Those are kernel upgrades, look at whatever is the most recent version and either manually select it during GRUB boot or make the default number setting that one. Even without the upgrade to this newer kernel, your system should be set to 6.5, so something would seem to be failing during the update, IMO.

[Chap]

Thanks for all your help. I'm not able to make this work, so I'm going to open a new question that's aimed directly at what I'm trying to do - namely, to successfully install the VBOX additions onto this VM disk I've been given.