Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 17:52:31 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Quickest way to update Message-ID: <20021101175231.GA78013@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> In-Reply-To: <000b01c281b4$868ed840$0701a8c0@darryl> References: <000b01c281b4$868ed840$0701a8c0@darryl>
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On Fri, Nov 01, 2002 at 08:39:46AM -0600, Darryl Hoar wrote:
> I have FreeBSD 4.3-release installed on a machine.
> I want to have the newest FreeBSD (and ports) installed
> on this machine without being concerned with old cruft
> hanging on.
>
> What is the fasted way to accomplish this task?
As you say, probably the fast way to get the system up to date is to
do a wipe and re-install. You will lose any customisations you may
have made, and depending on how your disks are laid out, you may find
it necessary to wipe out /home and all the user accounts.
If you can afford to start again from scratch, this method will be
pretty fast, and it gives you the opportunity to repartition and fix
up anything else that you've been having to live with.
Almost as fast is to use the install media to do an upgrade. This
will essentialy install new system binaries on top of your old ones
and make some attempt to preserve your password database and other
config files out of /etc. It's a good idea to install the system
sources and run mergemaster after this sort of upgrade, as there are
various changes to the config files you will need to implement.
The rest of your disk space, includeing /usr/local and /usr/X11R6 will
be untouched, so you'll have to cvsup(1) an up to date ports tree and
sic portupgrade(1) onto the machine. There are a few gotchas
involved, probably the trickiest of which is switching from XFree86
3.3.x to XFree86 4.2.1: it's best to deinstall the whole of XFree86
3.3.x, including imake, save the /etc/X11/XF86Config file to backup
and install XFree86 4.2.1 from scratch. Then you'll have to force a
rebuild of all of the apps. that depend on X.
When you say "the newest FreeBSD", do you mean the newest release
(4.7-RELEASE), the latest patch level on the RELENG_4_7 branch or the
current 4.7-STABLE (RELENG_4 branch). Anything other than the
4.7-RELEASE version will require you to cvsup the appropriate sources
and go through a {build,install}world cycle. In principal, you can
even use that method to upgrade from 4.3-RELEASE, but as others on
this list will testify, that can be easier said than done.
> I have 512K dsl. Can I do an online install in a reasonable
> amount of time?
Is that a separate ADSL router or do you have an ADSL "modem" plugged
directly intoyour FreeBSD box? If it's the latter you need to check
that you can connect to your provider using the installation media ---
if you try booting up sysinstall and going through the motions of
doing an installation over FTP, it should be apparent if you can
connect before you get to the stage of making irrevocable changes to
your original system.
With a 512K DSL you should be able to do a full system install in
around an hour, maybe less. If you're going to be rebuilding a lot of
ports (or upgrading a lot of packages), that will take rather more
time, but unless your machine is particularly slow or memory poor or
you have an unreasonably large number of ports installed you should be
able to get everything upgraded inside a day.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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