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Date:      Fri, 24 Nov 2000 16:37:55 -0600 (CST)
From:      Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
To:        01031149@3web.net
Cc:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: best upgrade path?
Message-ID:  <14878.60867.961436.82467@guru.mired.org>
In-Reply-To: <131222714@toto.iv>

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Duke Normandin <01031149@3web.net> types:
> On 22 Nov 00 at 20:36, Mike Meyer wrote:
> >thursday@altavista.net types:
> >> Hi,
> >> I have a FreeBSD 3.3-RELEASE machine which I'm considering upgrading to
> >> 4.2-RELEASE.
> >> I'm wondering what the best upgrade path is: whether to use the "Upgrade"
> >> method provided in /stand/sysinstall, or whether to wipe out the hard
> >> drive and do a completely fresh install from scratch. 
> >Wipe the hard drive (or at least everything fs that install is going
> >to touch) and do a fresh install. The upgrade stuff is relatively
> >painless, but it doesn't safe very much time.
> Did you mean reformating the HDD in DOS when you wrote "wipe the hard drive" 
> above - or something more Unix-centric? Thanks....

Well, that would do it. I was thinking more along the lines of using
the Unix newfs on the file systems. Assuming you've set things up so
you have FreeBSD partitions (some combo of /, /usr, /var and maybe
/usr/local) and a local content partition (call it /home) do a level 0
dump of the FreeBSD partitions, as you're about to destroy them. A
printed ls of /var/db/pkg will be useful, and a level 0 of /home is
probably a good idea. During the install, don't change the DOS slices
or the partitions. Use the old FreeBSD partitions, and set the newfs
flag so that those file system gets reformatted during the
install. Just mount /home, don't newfs it.

While doing the install, the ls of /var will tell you what packages
you had installed so you can install current versions.

If you don't have your local content on a separate partion, now is a
good time to fix that.

	<mike


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