From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Oct 14 15:34:26 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7995165D for ; Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:34:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kudzu@tenebras.com) Received: from mail-vc0-f181.google.com (mail-vc0-f181.google.com [209.85.220.181]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3927D2091 for ; Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:34:25 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-vc0-f181.google.com with SMTP id id10so4165934vcb.12 for ; Mon, 14 Oct 2013 08:34:19 -0700 (PDT) X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:in-reply-to:references:date :message-id:subject:from:to:content-type; bh=05wk5q0RLWkbLJEscKZmyhbXrTbl3fm+Rfw4o+dJ16U=; b=iPJqpRK//ALIuhSrssq3jGJlKUkw+mbsQsQlLiTeSsgGzjzV7vIQHmQ2o+0MlYGfS9 lWpGBEYdI54ikhK+7kn/mRLSBVvep6iUxzpGyHQPnwNYVTMcZxHLxNxcilhA4ANJRxbW xzxBrn7d8CzvYS5HcWbVZmBraViD3K7W8h+iDJWYENt8DxzXt62wrqNxR3ur9bnr6Hij tOc+ajfdondFlSvV7e8CMTS0yS0MnIXCw1IVhoaRyWtbMGJhkffFbJE5xoB4403rL9J9 uwqhNrZaTxIdMoJ8WAB4lNv1NQEfRfTJ9Nnc85ctCW9ShOkDmvjqNDkqoK7qLH+DqMew fTXw== X-Gm-Message-State: ALoCoQkdIRm/Uo2dRCt1MTpMld7/aJ62gJxJlTdBMa76k6VKFIjGnXKdtUbP2o6ok3KgT2BzcERN MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.52.22.110 with SMTP id c14mr791628vdf.28.1381764859050; Mon, 14 Oct 2013 08:34:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.220.112.83 with HTTP; Mon, 14 Oct 2013 08:34:18 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20131014161206.c4bda8cf.freebsd@edvax.de> References: <20131013172430.71AA26018E@smtp.hushmail.com> <20131014040742.d03fa5bd.freebsd@edvax.de> <20131014072118.8a49bd58.freebsd@edvax.de> <20131014161206.c4bda8cf.freebsd@edvax.de> Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 08:34:18 -0700 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Reinstall without reformat From: Michael Sierchio To: FreeBSD Questions Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2013 15:34:26 -0000 The brutal and brute-force approach can work - better if you boot from a USB stick, of course. You can untar base.tzx and kernel.tzx in your /, with filesystems mounted. As Polytropon says, do a backup of what you'll want afterwards. This approach will leave a lot of cruft (old versions of shared libraries, etc.), but will certainly work. Grab the distribution from (in this case, the example is for 9.2, i386) ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/i386/9.2-RELEASE