Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 20:46:45 -0700 From: Garrett Cooper <youshi10@u.washington.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Should I Upgrade 5.4 -> 6.2? Message-ID: <45FA1325.6020409@u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <20070315211624.GA89114@xor.obsecurity.org> References: <20070315164706.4fy8vlmhw00kk4s8@mail.schnarff.com> <20070315210957.GF71936@gizmo.acns.msu.edu> <20070315211624.GA89114@xor.obsecurity.org>
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Kris Kennaway wrote: > On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 05:09:57PM -0400, Jerry McAllister wrote: >> 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. > > Yes, a source upgrade from 5.x to 6.x (followed by portupgrade -fa) > isn't too bad. As with any upgrade you do need a recovery strategy > though. > > Kris I agree with both Kris and Jerry. Besides, if you run 6.2 you're running a supported version of FreeBSD whereas 5.4 isn't supported anymore (5.5 is the last supported version in the legacy 5.x branch). Plus there are slight improvements from 5.x to 6.x. -Garrett
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