centos 4.4 -> centos 5.2 yum update [DON'T DO IT!] (ala: Kurtis Blow)
by some small non-miracle, i was able to get a centos 4.4 box to update to 5.2 using yum and the instructions here.

i had to uninstall a few extra packages using the --dbonly flag, but eventually all of the dependencies were satisfied.

i only had two problems after the update. i am now down to one.

the first problem i noticed is that my fvwm window manager no longer had any text or colors other than black. a google search seemed to point at the rgb.txt file not being found, which is totally what was happening. i edited xorg.conf to set RgbPath to the correct location and all is well with my window manager, which is good, because i can only stand using fvwm. every other window manager either has a thousand limitations that prevent me from finding it user-friendly, even with modifications... OR it is so minimal that there are no options for modifying it.

now my only problem is that dns is not working. my home network's dhcp server should be sending the DNS server config to this client, but it's not getting set. i'm about to investigate that more closely.