[lug] Finding and removing obsolete packages after system upgrade

[Davide Del Vento]

Not really an answer to your question, but something to mull on....

Because of this and similar issues I do not do any system upgrade anymore
(I just update individual packets, obviously). During the overlapping time
between one version going out of support and the new one being ready for
installation, I make a separate, fresh install of the latter. I always set
up partitions in a way to ease this process: two partitions mounted
respectively as / and /old-os similar to a double-swapping-buffer (during
the brief overlapping period, the /old-os on the old system actually points
to the new system which replaces the "very old" one, but that's not a big
deal). During this transition time, I do multi boot. If I don't like
something in the new install, the old, untouched one is just a reboot away.
I used to share home directories, but ran into troubles there too (new
versions of software getting "crazy" about old format of data which their
former selves saved in home). So that has led me to do something similar
for home directories too.

I've found that just dealing manually with what I need to preserve is
waaaaaaay easier and more robust than upgrade-and-pray. Plus, gives lots of
peace of mind since the old version is untouched and available so I am more
aggressive in trying new things for the new install -- and wipe it out if I
don't like them.

As I said not an answer, YMMV. Just $0.01 (half than usual...)

Cheers,
Davide

On Wed, May 6, 2020 at 1:10 PM Jonathan Eidsness <
jonathan.eidsness at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey Everybody,
>
> Docker broke on my recent system upgrade to Fedora 32 as a result of
> having oci-systemd-hook installed (which was obsoleted some time ago).
> Removing the package fixed my issue, but now i'm left wondering what other
> obsoletes are hiding in there.
>
> Does anyone know if there's a way to query dnf for packages that aren't
> found in any upstream repositories anymore? A list of packages that have
> been obsoleted in fedora would be a good option as well.
>
> I've tried dnf list --obsoletes, but it looks like it only returns really
> recent obsolete versions of packages or dependencies that have version
> conflicts, etc.
>
> Jonathan Eidsness
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