Upgrading from Fedora Core 3 to Fedora Core 4 -- quick upgrade using ISOs from HDD

The easiest and fastest way to upgrade FC3 to FC4 is to do it using the ISOs from the hard drive.

In my case I am using the nvidia driver (see related post...), the IPW2200 kernel module driver for wireless and the firmware for the corresponding IPW2200 driver. (See related post...). So prior to the upgrade make sure to download all of the required drivers.

Below is a quick outline of the upgrade using ISOs from the hard-drive itself without having to burn it into cds or dvds:

1. Download the required ISOs. (Note: It helps to keep all of the downloads in a seperate partition. In my case it is in "/mnt/hda5/fc4" .)
   
2. Mount the first ISO.
   

   # mount -o loop /mnt/hda5/fc4/FC4-i386-disc1.iso /mnt/cdrom
   

3. Copy the "vmlinuz" and "initrd.img" file from the isolinux directory to "/boot". Remember to delete the existing "/boot/vmlinuz" symbolic link first.

   # rm -rf /boot/vmlinuz
   # cp -f /mnt/cdrom/isolinux/{vmlinuz, initrd.img} /boot
   

4. Edit "grub.conf" and include the below lines to load "vmlinuz".

   title Fedora Core 4 upgrade
           root (hd0,1)
           kernel /vmlinuz root=LABEL=/
           initrd /initrd.img
   

5. Reboot the system and select "vmlinuz" (Fedora Core 4 upgrade) to boot into.
6. Go through the prompts and upgrade from HDD using the downloaded ISOs.
   
7. Once the upgrade is finished, install the required drivers.