Hi Mohammad,

Do you have a Red Hat Satellite server? If so, you'll need to make a custom channel specific to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.9, if you do not have a Red Hat Satellite server, you could do this with a RHEL 5.9 binary disk.

Important note: (because this could be potentially used/read by anyone at any experience level), make sure you acquire the proper RHEL disk. If you are upgrading a server, get the server ISO file, if you are upgrading a non-server (client, workstation, desktop system), then acquire the Workstation DVD. IMPORTANT do not mix these up, and only select one, the proper one.

Or do you have access to a RHEL 5.9? If not download RHEL 5.9 RED HAT SERVER (not workstation, this is server) here. Important, get the DVD iso file: NOTE: This is for SERVER, not Workstation (or "client" non-server)

 Binary DVD (Server Core/Cluster/Cluster Storage/Virtualization)
Last modified:  2015-03-09 SHA-256 Checksum:
    33df3114c997e43e8d61a18f87e5cb8561b8f84f9065199eaf642c49da46d5ad 
4GB file

If you are doing this to RHEL workstation, then this is the location for RHEL Workstation. You will want Binary DVD #1

Here is help with an ISO download, and you do not have to use "wget" to get the file, you can just use a standard web browser such as Firefox and download the RHEL DVD iso file that way.

Red Hat Linux (RHEL) 5.9 was released 2013-01-07 (January 7th, 2013). RHEL 5.10 was released 2013-10-01 (October 1st, 2013). There are a lot of updates from the time RHEL 5.9 was released and about 10 months later when RHEL 5.10 was released. So if you upgrade from RHEL 5.3 to RHEL 5.9, your system will be taken to the beginning of RHEL 5.9 which is 2013-01-07.

I'd recommend considering what reasons you are being limited to RHEL 5.9, if you can somehow resolve that limitation and go to at minimum RHEL 5.11, or even consider a higher version since RHEL 5's patch availability/support is reaching it's sunset sooner than later.

One method (if you do not have a Red Hat Satellite server) to bring your system from RHEL 5.3 to RHEL 5.9 is to use a local yum repository for RHEL 5.9.

You will need the RHEL 5.9 iso I mentioned earlier, if you do not have it already.

Most people never do it, but I personally recommend verifying the md5sum of the ISO file you download from Red Hat. This will verify the downloaded iso file is at least good on the system you downloaded it (hopefully it is the same system you are burning the DVD to). again,

Just for sanity, check your system to make sure someone didn't alter /etc/redhat-release file manually:

[root@yoursystem] # rpm -qa | grep redhat-relase

The output will show if it is server, workstation and what version. This is good to know before proceeding.

It is very important to make sure you have enough disk space before proceeding!! Do not fill up the "/" (root) file system.

[root@yoursystem] # df -PhT  /
Filesystem                             Type  Size     Used   Avail       Use%       Mounted ON
/dev/mapper/disk0-slash  ext4  120G    1.5G    118.5G    2%           /

The numbers above show a file system that has plenty of space. if needed adjust the instructions below to go to a mount point that has sufficient space. Bottom line, do not fill up your "/" file system (or any other file system you pick)

Commands to run (become root first):

[root@yoursystem] # mkdir -p /localyum  /cdrom/notmounted
[root@yoursystem] # df -kl /localyum

Remember to insert the RHEL disk into the tray... and mount it

[root@yoursystem] # mount /dev/cdrom /cdrom
[root@yoursystem] # rsync -au --progress  /cdrom/  /localyum/
[root@yoursystem] # echo RUN THE RSYNC MORE THAN ONCE
[root@yoursystem] # /bin/chmod -R 750 /localyum

• The ending “/” characters are important!

• Run the rsync command twice, the second time should ‘run clean’

Run these commands in order, note, replace "VERSION" below with whatever the file name with the version is...

echo "REFERENCE this next command will help you find the file for what is two lines below"
[root@yoursystem] # ls -l /localyum/Server/ | grep ^createrepo
[root@yoursystem] # echo "this installs the createrepo rpm you need to create the local yum repo"
[root@yoursystem] # rpm -ivh /localyum/Server/createrepo-VERSION.rpm
[root@yoursystem] # echo "this actually performs the creation of the local repository"
[root@yoursystem] # createrepo /localyum
[root@yoursystem] # echo "this is often overkill, but I find it helps to import gpg keys after making a yum repo"
[root@yoursystem] # rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-*

Edit the yum repo file... the contents are below this command

[root@yoursystem] # vi /etc/yum.repos.d/local.repo

(See text block below for contents of file)

[localyum]
name=localyum
baseurl=file:///localyum/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release

• Run this to reset your yum database

[root@yoursystem] # yum clean all
[root@yoursystem] # yum repolist 
repo id                          repo name                    status
localyum                      localyum                       x,xxx (some number of files, probably over 3000)

Finally, IF THAT PASSES (you should see some output similar (not identical) to the above, then do a yum check-update command to see what output it gives.

[root@yoursystem] # yum check-update

Last step. Take whatever sane approach is needed before you commit to performing the upgrade. Properly assess the risk, and if you have any doubt (any doubt), contact Red Hat Support before proceeding. Once you believe you are ready, perform the yum update.

Along the way in writing this, I found this "Red Hat Yum Cheatsheet" which basically shows some options with yum, which is just for reference.