Upgrading from Fedora 33 to 35 causes upgrades to unnecessary groups

Ask Fedora
1

I’m new to Fedora, I started using it a year ago. I first installed the KDE spin, then I started to mainly use LXQt (briefly used XFCE). So in the process of changing desktop enviorments I might’ve caused the current issue somehow. When I try to upgrade it from 33 to 35 (or 33 to 34) it wants to ‘upgrade’ unnecessary groups that I don’t even have installed. Is there a way to block that or do I have to upgrade it to 35, then remove the packages that I don’t need? For example I don’t need any of the KDE related groups.

Here is the output summary of “sudo dnf system-upgrade download --releasever=35 --allowerasing”:

Upgrading Environment Groups:
 Xfce Desktop                                                                                                                        
Upgrading Groups:
 Administration Tools                                                                                                                
 Anaconda tools                                                                                                                      
 base-x                                                                                                                              
 Development Libraries                                                                                                               
 Development Tools                                                                                                                   
 Dial-up Networking Support                                                                                                          
 Firefox Web Browser                                                                                                                 
 Guest Desktop Agents                                                                                                                
 Input Methods                                                                                                                       
 KDE Applications                                                                                                                    
 KDE Multimedia support                                                                                                              
 KDE Office                                                                                                                          
 LXQt                                                                                                                                
 Common NetworkManager Submodules                                                                                                    
 Printing Support                                                                                                                    
 Standard                                                                                                                            
 x86 Baremetal Tools                                                                                                                 
 Multimedia                                                                                                                          
 Core                                                                                                                                
 Fonts                                                                                                                               
 Hardware Support                                                                                                                    

Transaction Summary
======================================================================================================================================
Install     123 Packages
Upgrade    2170 Packages
Remove        7 Packages
Downgrade     1 Package

Total download size: 2.1 G
DNF will only download packages, install gpg keys, and check the transaction.
Is this ok [y/N]:

Output of “dnf groups list installed”:

Last metadata expiration check: 0:58:54 ago on Thu 09 Dec 2021 09:31:36 PM CET.
Installed Environment Groups:
   Xfce Desktop
Installed Groups:
   Administration Tools
   Development Tools
   Fonts
   Hardware Support
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2

If you made a backup of your user-data, i propose to do an new fresh installation.
From 33 to 35 already changed a lot and you will be happy when you just have to focus on this points.

Releases/35/ChangeSet - Fedora Project Wiki
Releases/34/ChangeSet - Fedora Project Wiki

The EOL for 33 was announced for December 1st. You might get already 404 messages if you want to remove before upgrade.

3

No, wait.

“Upgrading Groups” is fine, it doesn’t install those groups. I assume it’s introducing new groups and so on, but that doesn’t mean they are being installed.

Output of dnf groups list installedwill look the same after your upgrade.

An upgrade only upgrades installed packages (and maybe installs some dependencies).

This looks completely fine.

I just upgraded a F33 workstation to F35. I had the same notice about Uprading Groupes. The upgrade went absolutely smooth.

Is there a reason why you run --allowerasing?

No need to worry about that. Old releases are moved to archive much later. It will be available for quite some time on all download mirrors. Moreover, you are downloading F35 packages, not F33.

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4

As I see it you may need the ‘–allowerasing’ in the case where packages are obsoleted or replaced with a new name. Having it does no harm and it might be of benefit.

I would not use it unless the initial try without it produces an error.

5

Thanks for the information. I’ll be upgrading to 35 shortly after I finish writing this.

BTW, I had -allowerasing on because I’m on a x86_64 laptop, and for some reason I had “rdma-core i686” installed. And it wouldn’t let me proceed with the upgrade without allowing it to be removed.

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