Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 16:47:33 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: imp@village.org (Warner Losh) Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: About to make the jump to -current... Message-ID: <199604280717.QAA10735@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <199604280136.TAA02941@rover.village.org> from "Warner Losh" at Apr 27, 96 07:36:01 pm
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Warner Losh stands accused of saying: > > I want to build a -current kernel on a -stable system. Is that a > reasonable thing to do? Will the resulting kernel work with -stable > binaries? Will I need to build the config out of -current in order to > configure the kernel, or will the one in -stable be good enough? You'll have lots of trouble 8( What you _can_ do is cheat lots. IIRC, you run an all-SCSI system. Scrounge a small (<100M is fine) IDE disk, and put a filesystem on it. Make it a root filesystem (/bin, /dev and friends) and populate it with hand-build -current binaries. (Not too hard, but you may have fun with /usr/include/* and /usr/lib/*). Then frob your BIOS settings to boot from your new root filesystem, and mount your old /usr and such. You may want to do a few other 'magic' things with symlinks to frob /usr/include to suit the system's current 'personality', or move it to the root filesystem and symlink /usr/include to /include. There are lots of rude things like this that are totally unsuitable for general use that can be done in a situation like yours; I'm sure some of the real oldsters here can think of more 8) You will need a -current 'config' to config a -current kernel. > Also, if I upgrade to -current, would it be good enought to grab > jordan's next snapshot and just extract all the binaries from it onto > my system and reboot with a -current kernel? Or is there a painless > upgrade option in the snapshot? You could use this technique to bootstrap your new root filesystem - pull apart the bindist bits to get everything that belongs in / rather than hand-build them. > Warner A question for the wise kernel people - how did the NetBSD folks do their variant symlink stuff? I was pondering the possibilities of performing 'magic' translations of symlink destination components based on sysctl variables. Erk, here's a sample : Symlink /usr/include to /usr/include.$PERSONALITY$ sysctl -w symlink.translation.PERSONALITY="current" Obviously not a trick for everyday use, but of immense versatility. Adding per-process translation overrides would be even More Magic. (but possibly a Bad Idea). -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] Collector of old Unix hardware. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199604280717.QAA10735>