Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 12:12:54 -0800 (PST) From: Ken Bolingbroke <hacker@bolingbroke.com> To: WAT Engineering <support@watcorp.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: best method to upgrade a 2.2.5 server to 4.1 Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0011121156220.55242-100000@fremont.bolingbroke.com> In-Reply-To: <005601c04cd8$e97d6510$c800a8c0@ENVOI>
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On Sun, 12 Nov 2000, WAT Engineering wrote: > We're looking for a 2.2.5 cdrom image. We want to build a test server to > work on this upgrade procedure. We have a couple of customers with 2.2.5 > servers and would like to have the remote upgrade procedure down pat. We > can't seem to find our 2.2.5 CD or any images out on the mirrors. You can always check out the source with the CVS tag RELENG_2_2_5 and then build your own release, in theory at least. I haven't tried it myself. I did a source upgrade from 2.2.5 to 4.1.1 a couple months ago, and aside from a few hiccups during the process, I was able to do it successfully. I've included an earlier message on what it took to do that down below. For what it's worth, I did this for kicks and because I hate throwing away good hardware (I still have a '386 in active use running FreeBSD). But in a production environment, I would definitely prefer to do a hardware upgrade and migrate the data to the new machine. If you're talking about a server that was installed when 2.2.5 was new, then it's probably a Pentium or Pentium Pro and overdue for an overhaul. With a new machine, you just install the current version of FreeBSD, current versions of any applications, and migrate your data. This approach, while costing more, will save you tons of aggravation in time and effort over migrating while keeping the old hardware, not to mention getting a big performance boost with more modern hardware. Ken -- Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2000 21:58:15 -0700 (PDT) From: Ken Bolingbroke <freebsd@bolingbroke.com> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: FYI: 2.2.5 --> 4.1.1 success! I had a Pentium-133 running 2.2.5 that I've finally gotten around to upgrading. I would have just installed fresh to 4.1.1, but this machine has no floppy drive and only 8meg RAM, so that would mean I'd have to upgrade and/or borrow the parts to do a fresh install. Also, this machine was previously an offsite server that got physically damaged. So several successive buildworlds seemed like a good way to stress-test the machine and make sure everything is still working right. So, I try the upgrade route. First, I cvsup 2.2.8-STABLE and buildworld (note: buildworld took 6 hours, 52 minutes), then installworld. All goes well, except that I get bitten by the network card driver changing from vx0 to xl0. No biggie, probably covered in the docs, but I didn't read those... :-) Next, I cvsup to 3.5-STABLE and go buildworld again. Part way through this, it stops with a nasty error, so I hit dejanews and find that I need to read UPDATING. Unfortunately, cvsup has given me an empty UPDATING file. There isn't anything in it, besides the version banner. Another dejanews message points me at: http://andrsn.stanford.edu/FreeBSD/transit.html Which explains that I need to do a 'make aout-to-elf-build' and install, among other helpful tidbits. Right, I forgot about the aout-->elf migration back then. But it still doesn't work, it dies out at another place. Back to Dejanews, and I find that it's suggested to upgrade to 3.2-RELEASE before going to the 3.x-STABLE. And on another website, it's recommended to do a 'make upgrade' instead of 'make aout-to-elf-build'. So I do this, and it starts compiling straight for over 11 hours, then errors out, apparently due to a conflict in my kernel configuration. I should have used GENERIC after all... With the GENERIC kernel, the buildworld succeeds and I get to 3.2-RELEASE. After several missteps with the 3.5-STABLE buildworld, mostly due to trying to run it over a network connection that got interrupted, then restarting with a 'make -DNOCLEAN buildworld', which left gunk that kept breaking the build, I finally got a fresh start at the console and finished it. (Only took 12 hours, 20 minutes for 3.5-S buildworld) Then I get to 4.1.1, there's an UPDATING, I follow the instructions, and it all goes nearly perfect. Yep, my old machine is finally running 4.1.1-STABLE, after being upgraded all the way from 2.2.5 in stages. My thanks to the FreeBSD team for making this possible! :-) Ken Bolingbroke To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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