How to Upgrade CentOS 7 to CentOS 8

In this article, you will learn how to upgrade CentOS 7 to CentOS 8. The steps described herein do not depict the official upgrade and this should not be applied to a production server yet.

Step 1: Install the EPEL Repository

To start off, install the EPL repository by running:

# yum install epel-release -y

Step 2: Install yum-utils Tools

After successfully installing EPEL, install yum-utils by running the command below.

# yum install yum-utils

Thereafter, you need to resolves RPM packages by executing the command.

# yum install rpmconf
# rpmconf -a

Next, perform a clean-up of all the packages you don’t require.

# package-cleanup --leaves
# package-cleanup --orphans

Step 3: Install the dnf in CentOS 7

Now install dnf package manager which is the default package manager for CentOS 8.

# yum install dnf

You also need to remove the yum package manager using the command.

# dnf -y remove yum yum-metadata-parser
# rm -Rf /etc/yum

Step 4: Upgrading CentOS 7 to CentOS 8

We are now ready to upgrade CentOS 7 to CentOS 8, but before we do so, upgrade the system using the newly install dnf package manager.

# dnf upgrade

Next, install CentOS 8 release package using dnf as shown below. This will take a while.

# dnf install http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/BaseOS/x86_64/os/Packages/centos-repos-8.2-2.2004.0.1.el8.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/BaseOS/x86_64/os/Packages/centos-release-8.2-2.2004.0.1.el8.x86_64.rpm http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/BaseOS/x86_64/os/Packages/centos-gpg-keys-8.2-2.2004.0.1.el8.noarch.rpm

Next, upgrade the EPEL repository.

dnf -y upgrade https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

After successfully upgrading the EPEL repository, remove all the temporary files.

# dnf clean all

Remove the old kernel core for CentOS 7.

# rpm -e `rpm -q kernel`

Next, be sure to remove conflicting packages.

# rpm -e --nodeps sysvinit-tools

Thereafter, launch the CentOS 8 system upgrade as shown.

# dnf -y --releasever=8 --allowerasing --setopt=deltarpm=false distro-sync

Step 5: Install the New Kernel Core for CentOS 8

To install a new kernel for CentOS 8, run the command.

# dnf -y install kernel-core

Finally, install CentOS 8 minimal package.

# dnf -y groupupdate "Core" "Minimal Install"

Now you can check the version of CentOS installed by running.

# cat /etc/redhat-release

Conclusion

This article concludes on how you can upgrade from CentOS 7 to CentOS 8. We hope you found this insightful.

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