5.4.1.1 Preparing the Yum Repositories

When upgrading an x86 Oracle VM Server from Release 3.2 or earlier to Release 3.3, the server requires a two step upgrade and each upgrade step requires a separate Yum repository. The first of these two repositories is referred to as the Oracle VM Server 3.3 Transitional Update Repository, while the second is the Oracle VM Server 3.3 Update Repository. Both of these repositories are available on the installation ISO. The transitional repository is contained in a folder named Transition, while the update repository is contained within a folder named Server.

This section describes how to create and set up your Yum repositories. These repositories should be located on a system that can be accessed via HTTP or HTTPS.

To create a Yum repository:

Download the most recent Oracle VM Server Installation ISO.
Create a folder where the ISO is to be mounted.
Mount the ISO.
Create a folder where both repositories can be accessed via some form of HTTP server, for example /var/www/repos.
Tip
If you have not set up a web server to serve files, you could use Python to temporarily serve your repositories by changing to the directory that you have created and running the Python SimpleHTTPServer module:
```
# cd /var/www
# python -m SimpleHTTPServer 80
```
You may do this when you have finished setting up your repositories and you are ready to perform the upgrade.
Copy the mounted ISO folder to the new folder that you have created using -r for recursive and -p for preserve.
If you have installed additional packages on your existing Oracle VM Servers, you must ensure that these packages are also added to the Oracle VM Server 3.3 Update Repository as described in this section.
Check that both of the repositories are accessible via HTTP using a web browser.

Example 5.1 Setting up the Yum Repositories

This example shows some of the steps that you might take to set up both of the required repositories to perform the upgrade.

# mkdir /tmp/ovs-mount
# mount -o loop OVS-3.3.1.iso /tmp/ovs-mount
# mkdir /var/www/repos
# cp -rp /tmp/ovs-mount/* /var/www/repos/

On an alternate system, such as one of the Oracle VM Servers that you intend to update, check that you are able to access the two update repositories via HTTP. For example, use wget to download a small file like the repomd.xml file:

# wget http://example.com/repos/Server/repodata/repomd.xml
# wget http://example.com/repos/Transition/repodata/repomd.xml