Note on using /dev/random: as usual, using this source for entropy will give you pure randomness, though due to the nature of the random source (see Wikipedia entry on /dev/random) the script may sometimes lock up and fail to generate a complete output, as it has run out of randomness. If you are intending to use this alot, then it is advised to use /dev/urandom that doesn’t block, although that comes at the cost of a small bit of entropy.

#!/bin/bash
# Script for pulling x characters from a random source
#   and prints them out to stdout
# Version 1.0.0
# By Simon Cook (http://simoncook.org)
 
# Fill in the two variables below
#  "entropy" is the source of randomness
#  "chars" is the number of chars we want
entropy=/dev/random
chars=5
 
# Pull x characters from source
i=0
while read -r -n1 char
do
    echo -n "$char"
    (( i++ ))
if [ "$i" -eq "$chars" ]; then
   echo ""
   exit 0
fi
done < "$entropy"

Licensing: This small script is released under the CC-GNU GPL licence.

.

I use a Fedora 9 server, which I can’t get to, so the normal method of putting a disc in and letting anaconda do all the work just isn’t suitable for me, so using yum I “upgraded” by telling yum to use the Fedora 10 repos and then getting the system to update from this. This method is somewhat risky, but for this case it seemed to turn out well. Previously this method has caused funny problems with X-server, but as I don’t use any x applications (everything is just command line for me) this wasnt an issue.

The steps I used to set up this system was as follows.

1. Firstly, make sure your Fedora 9 installation is as up to date as possible. This is done in the normal way, and for this, it is probabily best if you clear your cache of any repos.

   yum clean all && yum update && yum clean all

   You will notice I clear the repo cache twice, this is to make sure that when we get it to do the upgrade, it doesnt try to use any old F9 repos.

2. Remove any extra repos other than the default Fedora ones, to minimise package conflicts even further. These files can be found in /etc/yum.repos.d/
3. Run the following command into rpm to get fedora to believe it is Fedora 10 and then to update itself to it:

   rpm -Uhv http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/10/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-10-1.noarch.rpm http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/releases/10/Fedora/i386/os/Packages/fedora-release-notes-10.0.0.1.noarch.rpm

4. Run another yum update, this time it will download a lot of packages as this will now upgrade you to Fedora 10
5. Reboot using the reboot command
6. Pray (a little)
7. Say hello to Fedora 10

You should now be running a proper version of Fedora 10. Note however that using an installation disc and upgrading using anaconda is still the recommended method of upgrading, but for those that cannot do that, at least this offers an alternative.

Note however that due to to some changes that happen between versions, you might notice some slight bugs running a new version upgraded in this way. I have yet to see any of these probems, but that is not to say that there aren’t any. Problems that are found will have to be fixed some other way, and I cannot be held responsible for any of these. Basically, here is a method but it is unsupported so it’s at your own risk.

I hope these instructions will come in handy to someone at some point, but basically if you need them, they are here.