From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jul 29 12:32:41 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E8CD3106566B for ; Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:32:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jherman@dichotomia.fr) Received: from mail.dichotomia.fr (hydrogen.dichotomia.net [91.121.82.228]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B0E138FC17 for ; Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:32:40 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.0.51] (109.53-251-89.rdns.acropolistelecom.net [89.251.53.109]) (Authenticated sender: kha) by mail.dichotomia.fr (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 6F0243DD073 for ; Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:29:27 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: <4E32A865.6030402@dichotomia.fr> Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:32:37 +0200 From: Jerome Herman User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:5.0) Gecko/20110719 Thunderbird/5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <4E327A4A.3010904@surfnet.nl> In-Reply-To: <4E327A4A.3010904@surfnet.nl> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Greylist: Sender succeeded SMTP AUTH, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.2.7 (mail.dichotomia.fr); Fri, 29 Jul 2011 14:29:27 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Re: Upgrading X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2011 12:32:42 -0000 On 07/29/11 11:15, Jeffrey Everling wrote: > Dear sir/madam > > On my work I have a system which uses FreeBSD 6.3 as platform. > Now we want to upgrade to 8.2 but do we need to upgrade to 7.x first? > The update manual to 8.2 on the site does not mention 6.x > Hello, Yes you definitely should upgrade to 7.x first. Straight double upgrades can be very tricky. The best approach would be to set-up another box directly in 8.2 and migrate users, data and daemons in a careful and progressive way. If you cannot use another server for the migration, then you should : - Read /usr/ports/UPGRADING carefully, same goes for /usr/ports/CHANGE. - Backup your box - Make sure your box can reboot on its own and then upgrade the port tree and grab the latest version for all your ports - Make sure your box still reboots and works fine and then backup again (on an new tape/different file) - Upgrade to 7.X following the handbook - Stay on 7.X for one month or two, just to make sure there are no problems with your 7.X install. Then backup again (you can overwrite one of the previous backup if you are short on space) - Upgrade to 8.X following the handbook. The way you are asking the question makes me think you are not very comfortable with FreeBSD, which in turns makes me think there are two possibilities : 1 - You setup the 6.3 box yourself but for very simple tasks (like firewall and DNS, maybe a webserver and that is it) 2 - Someone else set-up the box ages ago, left the company (or got promoted out of IT) and you have been officially chosen to clean up. In the later case it would be a good idea to make a longer post on this mailing list explaining the role of this server and the ports installed on it. Regards Jerome Herman