From owner-freebsd-current Wed Jun 30 0:29: 6 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from jason.argos.org (a1-3b169.neo.rr.com [24.93.181.169]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92D7114E0D for ; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 00:29:03 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@argos.org) Received: from localhost (mike@localhost) by jason.argos.org (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id DAA14201; Wed, 30 Jun 1999 03:32:57 -0400 Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 03:32:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Nowlin To: Andy Grum Cc: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Upgrading from ancient to current... In-Reply-To: <3779A0A6.41C67EA6@vnet.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > I am currently running FreeBSD 2.1.5, and would like to upgrade to 3.1 > without losing the tremendous amounts of data on my drive (backups are > unfortunately not an option). > I have seen several posts containing advice for accomplishing this task > by altering sysinstall options, but this seems to only apply when > upgrading from less distant version numbers. Is it even possible to > upgrade to current from this ancient a version? > I'm not a total expert on this, but from my experience, "stepping" the system up is pretty reliable... Most of my systems started out at 2.1.5, and have been CVSup'd to either 3.x or 2.2.8 without any major hair loss. I would definitely suggest upping to 2.2.8 first -- it's a much easier transition than going directly to 3+. There's a problem I ran into with a change in the root device definition in /etc/fstab, but the mailing lists archives should describe the fix for this -- it's basically changing /dev/wd0a to /dev/wd0s1a (or something like that) if I remember correctly. Once you get it up to a recent 2.x setup, start reading the docs about doing the 2->3 upgrade, while playing with your 2.2.8 system to make sure everything works. > (backups are unfortunately not an option). Hmmmmmmmm....... (frown) Question for the group: Is it possible to run a 2.2.8 kernel (temporarily) with a 2.1.5 binary installation tree? If it is, it'll be much smoother (and safer) upgrade for you.... --Mike To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message