This article is a memo to myself about how to upgrade Fedora on a Linode instance using the "clean install" method.

I assume there already exist an instance (let's call it "linode-old") from where one wants to upgrade the Fedora version.

Login to your Linode control panel. In the "Linodes" tab, click on "Create Linode". Some important parameters here are, the region, which must be the same as linode-old, the ssh keys, if you want to reuse the same as for the previous instance, and the OS, which is the new new Fedora version you want to upgrade too.

Once the instance is running, you can make your life easier by setting an environment variable with the IP of the new instance

export LINODE_IP_NEW=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

Log into the new instance with as root:

ssh root@${LINODE_IP_NEW}

Create a new user (XXX is the user password):

useradd -p XXX -m pascal

Add the new user to the sudoers:

usermod -aG wheel pascal visudo -> uncomment the line: %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

Allow remote access to the instance for the new user:

cp -R .ssh /home/pascal/ chown -R pascal:pascal /home/pascal/.ssh

Disconnect from the new isntance and reconnect to it as the new user:

exit ssh pascal@${LINODE_IP_NEW}

Setup and secure the instance (cf here):

sudo dnf upgrade sudo timedatectl set-timezone 'Asia/Tokyo' sudo hostnamectl set-hostname linode sudo nano /etc/hosts -> copy the content of /etc/hosts of linode-old sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config -> set PermitRootLogin to "no" -> set PasswordAuthentication to "no" -> set AddressFamily to "inet" sudo systemctl restart sshd

Setup fail2ban as described here. Install various tools:

sudo dnf install tar gtk3-devel sqlite

Install Apache and PHP:

sudo dnf upgrade sudo dnf update sudo dnf install httpd -y sudo systemctl enable httpd sudo systemctl start httpd sudo systemctl status httpd sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=ssh sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=https sudo firewall-cmd --reload sudo dnf install php php-common php-mysqlnd php-cli php-gettext php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-pear php-curl php-gd php-xml php-bcmath php-zip php-json -y sudo systemctl restart httpd -> copy the content of /var/www/html/ from linode-old

Setup LetsEncrypt as described here:

sudo dnf install epel-release sudo dnf upgrade sudo dnf install snapd sudo systemctl enable --now snapd.socket sudo ln -s /var/lib/snapd/snap /snap -> reboot the instance sudo dnf remove certbot sudo snap install --classic certbot sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot -> copy the content of /etc/letsencrypt from linode-old sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf -> copy the content of /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf of linode-old -> copy /etc/httpd/conf/httpd-le-ssl.conf from linode-old sudo yum install mod_ssl sudo systemctl restart httpd

Transfer the static IP adress as described here. Update the ssh connection by deleting the lines in ~/.ssh/known_hosts referring to the swapped IP and ssh-ing again into them as usual (the correct lines will be automatically recreated). Set the appropriate rights for read/write/exec using chcon.