From owner-freebsd-questions Mon May 3 11:54:47 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from voyager.fisicc-ufm.edu (ip-46-094.guate.net [200.12.46.94]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C41BD15010 for ; Mon, 3 May 1999 11:54:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from obonilla@voyager.fisicc-ufm.edu) Received: (from obonilla@localhost) by voyager.fisicc-ufm.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id MAA07279; Mon, 3 May 1999 12:52:01 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from obonilla) Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 12:52:01 -0600 From: Oscar Bonilla To: Lucky Green Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Upgrading from 2.2.6 to 3.1 via ssh? Message-ID: <19990503125201.B1960@fisicc-ufm.edu> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i In-Reply-To: ; from Lucky Green on Mon, May 03, 1999 at 08:13:36PM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Mon, May 03, 1999 at 08:13:36PM +0200, Lucky Green wrote: > I need to upgrade a box from FreeBSD 2.2.6 to 3.1 over ssh. For all > practical purposes, the machine is inaccessible. (11 hours by airplane). > > Which means the upgrade *must not* lock me out of the box. I read > /usr/src/UPGRADE on a 3.1 box, but am still confused. Is there a > step-by-step tutorial somewhere that describes how to safely perform an OS > upgrade when physical access is simply not an option? > I've done this out of necessitie. I wouldn't recommend it but here it goes FWIW. Some preliminaries: 1. I did upgrade from sources. This has been discouraged in the mailing lists, but I did it anyway and it worked! 2. Have someone on the machine that can do stuff if you screw up and the machine doesn't boot anymore. ok, start with this: 1. Log into the machine and install cvsup if it's not already installed. 2. cvsup the latest sources. 3. cd /usr/src and read Makefile READ THE WHOLE FILE!!! 4. nohup make NOCONFIRM=yes aout-to-elf-build & this will leave the make running in the background so you can disconnect and reconnect to check how it is going by tail -f /usr/src/nohup.log 5. when it's finished do a make NOCONFIRM=yes aout-to-elf-install I think there's an issue here with the new elf kernel config file. I think you can pass that as a parameter to make or copy your config to GENERIC or something. It's VERY important to have a config file prepared for the new elf system as the system won't boot otherwise. 6. just to be sure recompile the kernel. cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf config YOURKERNEL; cd ../../compile/YOURKERNEL ; make depend && make && make install 7. reboot the box (and pray :) this is HIGHLY not recommended, but if you can't do otherwise... the other option (prefered) would be to have someone do it on the remote side and walk him through it over the phone. As i've told you, i've done this before and it has worked, but i've done it several times and it has not worked every single time. sometimes i've left machines in a completly unusable state this way. regards, -oscar To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message