Fedora security updates only on newer releases

[lucaberta]

Hello all,

our beloved Vortexbox runs on Fedora 23 which has been EoF (end of life) since December 2016:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/End_of_life

Given the news of the meltdown and spectre bugs, which are based on hardware issues and can only be mitigated by software updates, and given that Fedora has released such patches only for Fedora 26 and 27, I wonder if anyone here has tried to perform an update of the underlying OS on a functioning Vortexbox machine following these instructions:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade

Can anyone here (Andrew maybe? others?) comment on what changes, if any, have been performed on the standard Fedora core software load for Vortexbox? Would anything specific create issues in case of a DNF system upgrade?

Thanks, Luca

[garym]

I suspect Andrew may be working on VB 2.5 which uses newer fedora.

[Doris1997]

I doubt it.

[garym]

I doubt it.

hard to say. I've gone through 10 years of different VB versions and Andrew usually updates VB about every 3 to 5 versions of fedora. I never recall any hints about new versions appearing either. All of a sudden he announces that a new version is available. But all this said, I have no inside information.

[Doris1997]

Hope your right, I think Andrew is more into his new sellable products now ... I “Love” Vortexbox and sincerely hope the upgrades continue for the rest of our lifetimes!

[garym]

As he should be, as this is how he makes a living. But I'm sure he can multi-task! And I too hope to have a few more iterations of VB....

[Doris1997]

No argument there, hope he makes lots of cash, by the way I purchased the Vortexbox Appliance from Small Green Computer never built the free source code server.

[garym]

Same here. I've purchased 4 Vortexbox Appliances from Small Green Computer, including one custom built.

[Doris1997]

Good for you Gary, and everyone who purchased Andrews Vortexbox appliance, everyone should be paid for their talents especially when others are freely enjoying that talents benefits.

[bart]

.... I wonder if anyone here has tried to perform an update of the underlying OS on a functioning Vortexbox machine following these instructions:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DNF_system_upgrade

Can anyone here (Andrew maybe? others?) comment on what changes, if any, have been performed on the standard Fedora core software load for Vortexbox? Would anything specific create issues in case of a DNF system upgrade?

From the link you provided:

Can I upgrade from an End of life release?

Note that Fedora strongly recommends against ever running an end-of-life release on any production system, or any system connected to the public internet, in any circumstances. You should never allow a production Fedora deployment to reach end-of-life in the first place.

With that in mind, if you do have an end-of-life release newer than Fedora 20 installed on a system you cannot just discard or re-deploy, you can attempt to upgrade it, though this is a less-tested and less-supported operation. You can try to upgrade through intermediate releases until you reach a currently-supported release, or try to upgrade to a currently-supported release in a single operation. It is not possible to state with certainty which approach is more likely to be successful.

If you attempt to upgrade across more than two releases in one operation, please also read the next answer.

If you have Fedora 20 or earlier installed, you cannot upgrade with DNF system upgrade alone. You must upgrade at least part of the way using bare dnf or yum. You can either upgrade to Fedora 21 that way and then upgrade the rest of the way using DNF system upgrade, or you can attempt the entire upgrade using bare dnf or yum. Note this method is in itself not an officially recommended upgrade mechanism. To be frank, any upgrade from Fedora 20 or earlier is very much done 'at your own risk'.

It should be doable if Andrew didn't modify much under the hood, but since I'm perfectly happy with my (homebuild) Vortexbox today, I'm not gonna try that command unless it is tested (I cannot afford much time for rebuilding at the moment).
This can also be of interest for the people which couldn't upgrade to version 2.4 for various reasons (32 bit,old hardware).

cheers
/bart

[Arcticpollen]

Interesting thread...

As my attempt to run VB2.4 on my existing hardware last weekend resulted in no sound through the USB DAC on my Oppo BDP, I thought that there was not much to lose by trying the Fedora upgrade method that Lucaberta linked to above. I thought I'd try an slightly incremental approach and go to Fedora 25 rather than trying to go straight to 27 using: -

dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade

dnf system-upgrade download --refresh --releasever=25

dnf system-upgrade reboot

Having attached a monitor to the host so I could keep an eye in the upgrade progress, I was quite suprised to see one of the packages listed as Vortexbox 2.5.1 being installed.

Following the reboot, the system came straight back up and it has cured my playback issue and shows the following: -



I will have a play and see what is or isn't working so far...

[garym]

Very interesting. Particularly the VB 2.5.1 indication.

[Arcticpollen]

Very interesting. Particularly the VB 2.5.1 indication.

As it was a very clean 2.4 installation, I had not installed Bliss or Plex yet as I was really trying to fix the USB DAC output from LMS. Adding Bliss post the Fedora 25 upgrade, broke Bliss.

I will re-install 2.4 again clean plus Bliss/Plex and update everything fully before trying the Fedora upgrade again. Part of the Fedora upgrade involved pulling down loads of updates to installed services and. I assume, their dependencies.

I'll report back once I've re-done everything for testing.

[Arcticpollen]

Update: - OK, so I detached my STORAGE drive again and gave it all another go: -

• Installed VB2.4 from scratch from a bootable USB image.
• dnf -y update to grab latest updates - ran it twice to make sure. Rebooted.
• Resized the root partition with config_4-30.sh
• Installed Plex and Bliss from the VB GUI.
• Manually installed latest version of Plex from SSH session. Rebooted again.
• Ran dnf install dnf-plugin-system-upgrade
• Ran dnf system-upgrade download --refresh --releasever=25
• Ran dnf system-upgrade reboot
• Shutdown and reconnected my STORAGE HDD.
• Edited /etc/fstab to mount my additional HDD as /storage as per the old 2.3 two disk installation instructions.
• Ran dnf -y update a couple of times more.

All went fine except that Plex was downgraded but that was an easy fix by re-installing the latest version via DNF install via SSH. Bliss is fine too.

LMS is fine via my USB DAC on the Oppo.

Now seem to have Vortexbox 2.5 on Fedora 25... If I get brave tonight, I might try running it up another 2 versions to Fedora 27.

[garym]

The plot thickens. At least on the surface, it sounds like there may be a VB2.5 lurking out there (perhaps Andrew is testing). More interestingly, it seems as if there is a way to go straight from 2.4 to 2.5 with update fedora without doing a complete new install. Hopefull @andrew will chime in soon on this.