Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 13:10:03 -0800 (PST) From: Szilveszter Adam <sziszi@bsd.hu> To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: docs/34038 Message-ID: <200202052110.g15LA3U03811@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR docs/34038; it has been noted by GNATS. From: Szilveszter Adam <sziszi@bsd.hu> To: freebsd-gnats-submit@freebsd.org Cc: Subject: Re: docs/34038 Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 22:06:07 +0100 On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 10:20:02AM -0800, Hiten Pandya wrote: > I beleive this article is very good, and needs to be added to > the FreeBSD Documentation Project. It certainly helped a lot > of my mates (friends) to solve their a.out problem. :) Hello, I think that instead of pushing this submission, please provide some justification *why* this article should go in. I have just looked over it (which was not exactly made easier by the submitter who uuencoded *and* tar gzipped the article, which is IMHO quite gross for a single text file) and I see not a lot of info there that is not yet in various parts of the Handbook. In some cases, the info in the article is less accurate than the Handbook, which eg describes anon FTP and CTM in detail. Also, the text has some incorrect statements. Eg: mergemaster(8) is not a bash script. There are no bash scripts in the base system. Also, it says that cvsup needs bandwidth. While it is true that it will not hurt, in my experience daily cvsup runs took almost exactly the same amount of time over the 10Mbps link at university and over a 56kbps modem link. Also, I think you should be careful when describing the a.out -> elf migration path. It was a special case and is probably more trouble than just running "make upgrade" and "make aout-to-elf". The mailing list archives from the time when 3.0 was new should be consulted to see any pitfalls. Also, I think it does not work as easily as described, ie you cannot simply take the latest STABLE code and upgrade to it from 2.2.x using source upgrade. Instead, once somebody described the process like this (after doing it himself) - First, upgrade to the latest 2.2.8-STABLE. - Do the upgrade to 3.0 using the a.out -> elf migration path and looking at the mailing list archives. - Upgrade to the latest 3.x-STABLE (which is something like 3.5.1-STABLE now) - Upgrade to 4.0 or 4.1 perhaps. - Upgrade to the latest 4.x-STABLE. Yes, it is quite difficult, simply reinstalling from CD or FTP is probably easier. Merging /etc would be very difficult too. Not to mention /dev and the fact that you have to recompile many software packages from third-party source. The gist: Although cutting corners might work once or twice, the source upgrade path is actually only for those who are quite good at what they do and even then you should follow the guidelines. The text also has stylistic and spelling errors/typos. Please, before answering, look over the existing documentation set (incl Handbook, FAQ, etc) and say what information this article has that is not in one of the existing docs already. If you find any of them lacking please consider submitting patches there, first. P.S.: It is easy to loose track of what is already in the docs, because there so much of it already:-) Eg I just planned to sit down and write a document about how to connect your FreeBSD box via DSL, but looked in the Handbook first and found it is already there:-) P.P.S: This is not to discourage anyone from writing more howto-like docs for users who prefer that. But duplication within the FDP should be avoided. Such howtos should be then made available somewhere else. Hope this message will not be considered flame because it was not the intention. -- Regards: Szilveszter ADAM Szombathely Hungary To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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