Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 11:25:09 -0700 (PDT) From: bmk@dtr.com To: richard@harlequin.co.uk (Richard Brooksby) Cc: freebsd-install@freebsd.org, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "Installation" and "upgrade" Message-ID: <199509251825.LAA03649@everest> In-Reply-To: <v02130513ac8c422230f8@[192.88.238.248]> from "Richard Brooksby" at Sep 25, 95 12:35:50 pm
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> FreeBSD has a reasonable installation procedure, and the documentation > talks a lot about "intalling" FreeBSD. What about upgrading? [ I'd appreciate constructive criticism on the following post so I can improve the procedure ] Rumor has it that 2.1 will have a true upgrade procedure built into the install. Jordan would be the person to comment on that. Even with previous versions, I've been able to upgrade successfully without a lot of hassle. Read on... With careful planning of your disk layout and some self-discipline when it comes to customizing your system, upgrading it fairly trivial. To use this procedure, a few restrictions should be observed: (1) /, /usr, and /usr/local should be separate filesystems. Don't install anything into / and /usr, except core FreeBSD stuff. I usually also have a separate filesystem for X11, or install it in /usr/local - mainly so it doesn't get whacked during a reinstall. I also create a separate filesystem for user files and source code. (2) Do all of your customization in either /etc or in the /usr/local filesystem - not in / or /usr. I usually make /usr read-only. (3) Back up all of your filesytems before proceeding. Starting with 2.0.5(?) it's possible for sysinstall to preserve (i.e. not run newfs) selected filesystems. When you assign mountpoints, toggle off newfs for everything but / and /usr. You've already backed up everything you want to save, right? :) Proceed with the installation as usual. Everything in your / and /usr filesystems will be overwritten - and the new version will be installed over the top of it. After the installation is complete, you can meld in your customizations from /etc. You did back it up, didn't you? :) It might help you to see how I've laid out the disks on one of my systems: Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/sd0a 24591 14663 7960 65% / /dev/sd0s1e 63535 51736 6716 89% /usr /dev/sd0s1f 13807 5315 7387 42% /var /dev/sd0s2e 302383 63154 215038 23% /home /dev/sd0s2f 127087 52361 64559 45% /usr/X11R6 /dev/sd0s2g 175279 125677 35579 78% /usr/local /dev/sd1s1e 391023 2467 357274 1% /home/www /dev/sd1s2e 510975 330569 139528 70% /home/ftp /dev/sd4s1e 628319 215811 362242 37% /usr/src /dev/cd0a 528386 528386 0 100% /cdrom /dev/sd0s3 205604 121452 84152 59% /dos procfs 4 4 0 100% /proc During a reinstall, only root, /usr, and /var get touched. After reinstalling, I usually restore /etc into a scratch directory and then diff everything to see what's changed in the new version. I then copy over my customizations. I also restore a lot of files in /var - like /var/mail, /var/spool/uucp, and selected stuff in /var/db. Usually doesn't take very long. How successful you will be depends a lot on how careful you are in planning your disk layout. If you dork it up really badly, you have your backups, right? One other thing that I do is maintain a duplicate root filesystem on the second disk. The only thing that's different is the location of root in /etc/fstab. That way, even if something catastrophic happens, I can always boot to single-user and fix whatever's broken.
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