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Date:      Wed, 5 Mar 2003 13:14:27 -0500 (EST)
From:      IAccounts <iaccounts@northnetworks.ca>
Cc:        freebsd <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: 4.3 -> RELENG_4
Message-ID:  <20030305130116.Y51291-100000@diana.northnetworks.ca>
In-Reply-To: <3E6632D0.9000900@potentialtech.com>

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> > Unfortunatly, I have never successfully upgraded a Free box yet, mind you
> > I have only tried it on one.
> >
> > Last year I was dropped into a production environment with all 4.3
> > machines. I have no devel equipment prior to 4.6. The upgrade attempts
> > were all only on one box (4.6) and failed due to suspect hardware.
> >
> > My question is not howto upgrade, but;
> >
> > 1> Since I have only production equipment to 'test' an upgrade on, I am
> > very nervous. At what point of the upgrade procedure is it too late to
> > turn back if something does not go right.
>
> If you install the kernel, then reboot (before installing world) you will
> be ensuring that the new kernel you built will boot reliably.  This is
> the final practical point of return.  If you have problems with the new
> kernel booting, you can copy /kernel.old back to /kernel and be back to
> where you started.  If the new kernel is fine, continue with installworld.
> Once you've installed world, however, it's an ungodly amount of work to
> revert everything.
>
> > 2> I keep amanda tape backups of every file system on all machines. If
> > something goes critically wrong, can the system be rebooted at least to
> > the point where I can pull data back off tapes?
>
> As long as your system is bootable, yes.  Do you have FreeBSD 4.3 CDs?
> If so, you can easily do a base install, and then restore from backup to
> get back up and running as you were.  (should things happen to go
> terribly wrong)
>
> I've very seldom had any problems upgrading using cvsup.  You will hit a
> few (minor) gotchas ... read /usr/src/UPDATING and you won't have any
> problems with them.
>
> Basically:
> Update your source with cvsup
> read /usr/src/UPDATING and follow any instructions required (I believe
>   you'll need to manually create the relatively new sendmail users)
> Reveiw you kernel config file to see if any options have changed since
>   4.3
> make buildkernel
> make installkernel
> reboot  >>> if the reboot doesn't go well, boot kernel.old and copy it to
>              /kernel to get back to 4.3
> make buildworld
> make installworld
>
> Going from 4.3 -> 4.7 may cause some problems with some ports.  The solution
> is generally to uninstall the port and rebuild it.  Update your ports tree
> first.
>
> Schedule yourself a nice chunk of time to do the first machine, then you'll
> be able to better predict the time required for the rest.
>

Thanks for the goldmine of info! Unfortunatly, my boxes are sooo old :o)
that cvsup appears to be out of date, as I get 'Protocol negotiation
failed'.

Catch 22 I guess, so I found on http://people.freebsd.org/~jdp/s1g (I
think this is John Poelstra's site?) That I have to upgrade my cvsup.
I will do this then let you know how the upgrade went.

Thanks again.

> --
> Bill Moran
> Potential Technologies
> http://www.potentialtech.com
>
>


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