Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 09:32:01 -0500 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu>, Bryan Seltzer <bryan@chesco.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Upgrade install (was: easy question..) Message-ID: <19980615093201.21064@papillon.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980613163913.17179C-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu>; from Jason C. Wells on Sat, Jun 13, 1998 at 04:41:07PM %2B0000 References: <199806132314.TAA14715@carriage.chesco.com> <Pine.BSF.3.96.980613163913.17179C-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Sorry, I missed the original message due to the uninteresting subject
line.
On Sat, 13 June 1998 at 16:41:07 +0000, Jason C. Wells wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jun 1998, Bryan Seltzer wrote:
>
>> I have just purchased 2.2.6 cdroms. I currently have my machine set up with
>> version 2.1.5. I have been able to get this working on my internal network
>> and able to dial out with this machine. The question is can I install over
>> the existing system or should I wipe the drive and start over again?
>
> It is possible to do an upgrade using '/stand/sysinstall'. There are many
> scary messages that go with the upgrade.
>
> I myself have never done an upgrade. I just save all of my configuration
> files and wipe it and start over. I have never had trouble with this
> method. Also, I am the only user on my system. YMMV.
Just by chance, I did exactly this upgrade yesterday, more or less
"according to the book". It worked.
That's the good news. In fact, I had some problems with the CD-ROM
drive, not related to the fact that it was an upgrade, and had to
replace the drive. In the process, I restarted the upgrade several
times. This caused certain problems.
Some of the messages you get are confusing or even downright
frightening. When I get round to it, I'm going to put in a pr on the
subject. In the meantime, here are some points:
1. Make a backup at least of / and /usr before you start. This
should go without saying for any kind of installation, but enough
people forget it. With any reinstallation of any operating
system, you have the potential to shoot yourself in the foot.
Don't risk it.
2. At the end, the upgrade procedure will complain that you
previously had a "decidedly non-standard" installation, because it
couldn't find /etc/rc.conf (in 2.1.5, it was called
/etc/sysconfig). I haven't followed this one up completely, but I
think that you can avoid this problem by making a copy of
/etc/sysconfig to /etc/rc.conf before you start the upgrade. If
anybody tries this approach, please let me know how it works.
3. If you still have the old "compatibility slice" names in
/etc/fstab, you'll need to change them to the full names (for
example, /etc/sd0s1a instead of /etc/sd0a). The install
instructions suggest you do this after successfully rebooting the
new system. I suggest you do it before you start.
4. Make sure you really, really have enough space to complete the
installation. This is more important than with a new
installation, since there are some things that get confused if you
have to restart the installation.
5. In the partition editor, *don't* set the newfs flag. That's a
sure recipe for disaster. All you need is to set the mount point
name (it will contain a * until you do).
6. The upgrade installation is really a normal installation which
doesn't first delete the old files. In addition, it saves a
certain number of configuration files and restores them after the
installation is completed. It will ask you where to save them
(IIRC the default is /usr/tmp/etc, which is fine).
7. If you do have to restart the installation, *don't* save the /etc
files in the same place, or you will overwrite the original
configuration files with an undefined mixture of old and new. I
put them in /usr/tmp/etc2, /usr/tmp/etc3 and so on. Before the
end of the installation, I then used the "emergency holographic
shell" under Alt-F4 to rename this directory and make the original
name a symlink to the original files:
# mv /usr/tmp/etc2 /usr/tmp/etc2.foo
# ln -s /usr/tmp/etc /usr/tmp/etc2
This enabled the install to restore the original files from the
first attempt.
Things work fine if you don't need to restart the installation. As it
was, when we got the system up again, the configuration was pretty
much identical to what it was before.
I have a feeling that not too many people try the upgrade install.
I'd appreciate feedback from anybody who does (reports of complete
success, complete failure, gotchas, etc). Don't expect sympathy if
you didn't make a backup and wiped out your system.
Greg
--
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key
See complete headers for address and phone numbers
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19980615093201.21064>