Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 17:09:57 -0400 From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu> To: alex@schnarff.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Should I Upgrade 5.4 -> 6.2? Message-ID: <20070315210957.GF71936@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <20070315164706.4fy8vlmhw00kk4s8@mail.schnarff.com> References: <20070315164706.4fy8vlmhw00kk4s8@mail.schnarff.com>
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On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 04:47:06PM -0400, alex@schnarff.com wrote: > First off, I want to thank the people who responded to my thread > "Stability Issues on a 5.4-RELEASE box" a couple of weeks ago; after > disabling hyperthreading, getting a clean run of Memtest back, and > doing some serious fsck'ing of the disks, the box appears to now be > completely stable. I'm still not sure which of the above fixed the > problem...but I'll take a stable system at this point. :-) > > That said, in that thread I had asked about the advisability of > upgrading to 6.2, and it was intelligently pointed out that doing so in > pursuit of stability was a bad idea. Now that the box is stable, > though, I'm back to the same question: should I make the upgrade, and > if so, how should I do it? > > My primary driver for doing so would be to keep current enough that I'm > still getting security and other patches on a regular basis, and that I > can upgrade my applications from ports as necessary. If this is not an > issue, then my only remaining concern would be that it's usually easier > to get support on lists like this if you're running a modern version of > the OS (that's certainly the case with the OpenBSD folks). > > My primary concern with upgrading is that the box is in Portland, OR, > and I'm in Arlington, VA...and while the ISP is friendly, I doubt that > I could count on them for major system recovery if I botch something > during the upgrade. My other worry is that I don't want to break > existing apps if possible (the main one I'm concerned about is > Zope/Plone). This is a production box with moderate traffic, and it > would be a problem if there was extensive downtime. > > Is it worth upgrading? If so, what's the best way to do so -- CVSup, or > some other way? Are there any major caveats if I do choose to upgrade > (or choose to stay with the existing OS)? You should if you can reasonably do it, for the reasons you give plus improvements in performance and in some utilities. My sentiment is usually to do a clean install over major version numbers. It tends to leave less dross laying around. but I do not have to worry about down times very much, a couple of hours at night is not terribly noticable in my stuff. It does require more time down to do a clean from scratch install. But, I think you can get away with a cvsup upgrade from 5.4 to 6.2. Then your downtime is just the reboot and stuff at single user (mergemaster), plus probably some for upgrading various ports. ////jerry > > Thanks, > Alex Kirk > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
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