It’s been a while, but last time I tried to upgrade a Fedora minimal template, it tried to do a full upgrade, akin to a standard Fedora template from the repos, i.e. lots of additional packages.
Is it possible to upgrade to Fedora 34 minimal manually?
@marmarek wrote in Fedora 34 template · Issue #6568 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub
I haven’t tested in-place upgrade either, but in theory it should work.
As I can see now, the template is uploaded to testing repos, so no need to upgrade in my case.
sudo qubes-dom0-update --enablerepo=qubes-templates-itl-testing qubes-template-fedora-34-minimal
Updates in the template should be possible after adding the current-testing repo within the template.
If I did want to do an upgrade-in-place, wouldn’t using dnf distro-sync cause unnecessary packages to be installed? I’m not entirely clear on how distro-sync works and the man entry isn’t entirely clear.
As an aside, packages should stay up-to-date so long as we’re before 33’s EOL, correct?
No.
distro-sync looks at all the enabled repositories, to find the latest
version available from them, and then tries to get your installed
packages to that version.
This means that some packages may be upgraded, some downgraded.
The effect will vary depending on whether you have changed which
repositories have been enabled.
Yes
Thanks for the clarification.
New packages can also be installed if they become dependencies of packages, correct?
I’m not completely au fait with fedora packaging, but I assume so.
Just so I’m clear, is the main distinction between standard and minimal templates what repositories are enabled in their /etc/yum.repos.d/ (fedora) or /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ (debian) directory?
No, the main distinction is in the packages that are installed. There
may also be a difference in what repos are enabled.
I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.
Thank you for clarifying @unman. I was trying to understand what happens when upgrading minimal templates in place and extrapolated from your comment.
Looking more closely, I see the key here is in this part of your quote:
distro-sync looks at all the enabled repositories, to find the latest version available from them, and then tries to get your installed packages to that version.
Thanks as always @unman. I appreciate you.