Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 13:06:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: "Andrew C. Hornback" <achornback@worldnet.att.net> Cc: David Kirchner <davidk@accretivetg.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: Where is sysinstall? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10110171246150.42630-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu> In-Reply-To: <00a301c15728$684bf000$6600000a@columbia>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Andrew C. Hornback wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: David Kirchner [mailto:davidk@accretivetg.com] > > Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 12:15 PM > > To: Andrew C. Hornback > > Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG > > Subject: RE: Where is sysinstall? > > > > On Wed, 17 Oct 2001, Andrew C. Hornback wrote: > > > My main point of contention here is that either the CDs are > > incorrect, or > > > INSTALL.TXT on the CD is incorrect. sysinstall does not exist > > in an easily > > > accessible form on the CD, and is REQUIRED to properly upgrade > > the system if > > > you're using the CDs to perform the upgrade. > > > > > > --- Andy > > > > I can't speak for them authoritatively, but I'm betting that the CD > > authors expected you to either a) be able to boot off the CD > > There are those of us out here that don't have that option. > > > b) be able > > to read the CD and generate a boot floppy and use it to boot > > Again, there are those of us that don't have this option. I find it a > waste of hardware to keep a perfectly good floppy drive in a server, > especially when it never gets used in normal operations. You could just install one temporarily for the purpose, though, couldn't you? It's a $20 item. > > c) be able to mount the CD onto your current system and run sysinstall > from > > that. > > Again... the question is, where is sysinstall on the CDs? It is (I think) compiled into the boot.flp 2.88 image, which (either as it appears in the floppies directory on CD 1 or somewhere else) is what the CD boots from if the machine can boot from a CD. > And once again, I'll quote from INSTALL.TXT on the 4.4-RELEASE kit's CD #1: > > "Important: These notes assume that you are using the version of > sysinstall(8) supplied with the version of FreeBSD to which you intend > to upgrade. Using a mismatched version of sysinstall(8) is almost > guaranteed to cause problems and has been known to leave systems in an > unusable state. The most commonly made mistake in this regard is the use > of an old copy of sysinstall(8) from an existing installation to upgrade > to a newer version of FreeBSD. This is not recommended." > > Unless I'm reading this incorrectly, this says that in order to upgrade to > 4.4, you have to use the version of sysinstall that shipped with 4.4. Now, > am I reading this incorrectly? No, that's what they want you to do. However, you could possibly upgrade the sources in /usr/src/release/sysinstall and build a 4.4 sysinstall. You could boot that. You could install using that running version of sysinstall. It will install "over" your running system. This is an undocumented and obviously risky thing to do. It seems to install over the running system even if you tell it to install on another partition. It should be, in its effects, not that different from doing a binary upgrade--which you could in fact choose from the sysinstall menu. Then your entire /etc directory won't be overwritten. Now what makes this very different from booting 4.4 boot floppies or a 4.4 CDROM is that the kernel you're running is, of course, your 4.3 kernel, not a 4.4 kernel. (If you want a file system laid out for optimum use of dirprefs, you need a kernel more recent than 4.4-RELEASE.) Actually a 4.3 kernel will probably be all right but this is the sort of thing on which there are no guarantees. Annelise -- Annelise Anderson Author of: FreeBSD: An Open-Source Operating System for Your PC Available from: mall.daemonnews.org and amazon.com Book Website: http://www.bittreepress.com/FreeBSD/introbook/ 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?Pine.BSF.4.10.10110171246150.42630-100000>