[olug] Clean Upgrade using RPMS?

[Daniel G. Linder]

CM Miller wrote:
> Who has been sucessful in an rpm based upgraded using
> rpm or whatever rpm application, and would like to
> share with the group?

I'm agreeing with the rest of the group.  Sadly RPMs are not the
end-all, be-all for upgrading a tweaked system.  It has been a long time
since I used Debian, but I remember upgrading from one of the "stable"
to an "unstable" series once and only had to reboot to get a new kernel
installed.  Pretty slick.

I am thinking about re-installing a server that I have had up for some
time and was thinking about writing a script (perl probably) that would
take a list of all the files on the system (i.e. "find / -print") and
cross-reference that with the RPM database, and then backup the changed
and non-RPM files to another server.  It wouldn't be too hard to then
keep a list of the RPMs from the old system and cross-reference the new
RPMs on the freshly installed server.  Hey, this could be a neat hack!
:)

Dan