From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jun 5 00:47:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA01463 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 5 Jun 1997 00:47:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (gatekeeper.barcode.co.il [192.116.93.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA01455 for ; Thu, 5 Jun 1997 00:47:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from smap@localhost) by gatekeeper.barcode.co.il (8.8.5/8.6.12) id KAA04284; Thu, 5 Jun 1997 10:46:34 +0300 (IDT) X-Authentication-Warning: gatekeeper.barcode.co.il: smap set sender to using -f Received: from localhost.barcode.co.il(127.0.0.1) by gatekeeper.barcode.co.il via smap (V1.3) id sma004281; Thu Jun 5 10:46:15 1997 Message-ID: <33966E79.779A@barcode.co.il> Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 10:44:57 +0300 From: Nadav Eiron X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (X11; I; SunOS 5.5 sun4m) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Steve Hearn CC: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Upgrade procedures. References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Steve Hearn wrote: > > I've got several FreeBSD systems installed over the past year. > These are running 2.1.6 2.1.7 2.2 2.2.1 respectively. > > I'd like to bring them all up to same level. What level then? 2.2.2? 2.2-STABLE? > > Can anyone suggest the best approach (or point me to some > reading matter) Basically, there are two ways for that: #include 1. Using the upgrade option in sysinstall. Despite the warnings, it works for me just fine. DO BACKUP /etc before you start the upgrade, ans you *will* need to do a lot of updating there when you're done (be careful - rc.firewall for one gets overwritten w/o any warning). Another warning: if you have the sources installed you may want to delete them first. This is because much of it was moved to new directories (mainly from gnu to contrib) and the upgrade option in sysinstall will not delete the old copies if they are now in other directories, so it will wast something like 50MB (and also leave your source tree poluted with old sources). Be sure to backup anything valuable you've put in src (like kernel config files) befor doing that. 2. Use some method (CTM, CVSup) to bring your src tree up to date and then make a new kernel and world. This has the benefit of less downtime (if you get it right the first time), but to me it seems to be a more tedious process than just using sysinstall's update. On the other hand, if you want to go to -STABLE (and don't want to use the snapshots on releng22.freebsd.org), this is probably your only way. See the handbook section on staying stable/current with FreeBSD for details. > > (I've been too scared to try out the upgrade option in > sysinstall, given the warnings at the start!) Then test it out first on a machine that's not realy mission-critical and that has good backups! For me, at least, it works well enough most of the time. > > Steve Hearn > Exploration Geophysics Laboratory > University of Queensland > Brisbane > Australia > > Email: steveh@cetus.digicon-brs.com.au Nadav