Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2018 17:16:54 -0800 From: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> To: Andrea Brancatelli <abrancatelli@schema31.it> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Ancient FreeBSD update path Message-ID: <20180120011710.05B9C156E7E7@mail.bitblocks.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:28:41 %2B0100." <03c972a8f098b1b547da690efaad771f@schema31.it> References: <03c972a8f098b1b547da690efaad771f@schema31.it>
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On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:28:41 +0100 Andrea Brancatelli <abrancatelli@schema= 31.it> wrote: Andrea Brancatelli writes: > Hello guys. = > = > I have a couple of ancient FreeBSD install that I have to bring into > this century (read either 10.4 or 11.1) :-) = > = > I'm talking about a FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-p4 and a couple of FreeBSD > 9.3-RELEASE-p53. = > = > What upgrade strategy would you suggest? = > = > Direct jump into the future (8 -> 11)? Progressive steps (8 -> 9 -> 10 > -> 11)? Boiling water on the HDs? :-) = > = > Thanks, any suggestion in more than welcome. Incremental update will take a long time and if something gets messed up in the middle, you will be much worse off. You may also not find relevant packages any more for an EOLed release. And you may have to solve problems that no longer exist on newer packages. What I would do is to make a backup of everything, make a list of installed packages and config files, and do a fresh install of the latest release. Then get the critical packages working. Then add others as needed. If possible do this on a separate machine so that you can check config/program behavior on the original machine. When you are satisfied, either switch to the other machine or copy things back to the original. When one of my computers was starting to fall apart, I did this with an inexpensive used thinkpad. One more thing to consider: your ancient machine hardware may need to be maintenance/repais/replacement. A fully operational second (temporary) machine gives you a chance to try to do maintenace such as remove dust and cat hair carefully, check fans and replace them if needed, replace disks if older than 4 years, etc.
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