Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 05:47:39 -0600 From: Joe Warner <jswarner@uswest.net> To: James A Wilde <james.wilde@tbv.se> Cc: Send to newbies <freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Upgrade story Message-ID: <39DC6A5B.E553BD78@uswest.net> References: <NEBBLHNJHLFCJGCBFDKIKEKACAAA.james.wilde@tbv.se>
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James,
This would be an excellent article for Daemon News or
Daily.Daemonnews. I encourage you to submit it, so that
it can be shared with a wider audience. You can submit
this to Daemon News via articles@daemonnews.org but
they need to have it by the 11th, in order to appear in next
month's issue. You could also submit it to daily.daemonnews
by sending it to editors@daemonnews.org
Great story! Keep em coming!
Joe
James A Wilde wrote:
> I upgraded from 2.2.8 to 4.1 today and thought I might share with some of
> you other newbies the adventures I went through. If you will bear with me,
> a bit of background might be useful or even entertaining.
>
> I first came into contact with FreeBSD a little over three years ago when
> the company where I work started an Internet presence and hired a consultant
> to set up the Internet Service lan. This he protected with a firewall
> running 2.2.8 and I was left to administer this beast - under his
> supervision. I quickly bought the Red Book - I have now also bought the
> Complete FBSD book also - but most of my experience was gained by the
> hands-on method.
>
> At a later date when we had expanded the IS lan, I needed an smtp server and
> got someone from the consultant's company to set up a FreeBSD server, 3.1
> this time. Then I became daring and set up a machine at home, to play with,
> using an old pensioned 486 from work. And finally, when the smtp server
> became unstable - named crashes irregularly - I set up a new one myself,
> with the latest version of named and sendmail and a few other touches.
> Recompiled the kernel to incorporate IPFW and eliminate some unnecessary
> stuff.
>
> Soon I'm moving to a new employer who uses Sun Solaris and NT on the inside
> and Sun Solaris on the outside. I told them I was good (!) at FreeBSD but
> not so hot at Solaris and, guess what, they told me my first project will be
> to set up a FreeBSD name server. Which is why I decided it was time to
> upgrade the original and now pensioned 2.2.8 machine to 4.1 so as to be
> ready for IPv6 and other good things.
>
> Since I'm doing this on the cheapo, I decided to upgrade with FTP. This
> meant downloading kernel and mfs root file images and creating two boot
> diskettes. This went _very_ badly. I couldn't get the kernel disk to run.
> I had downloaded using Internet Explorer to my Windows NT machine and then
> created the disks from the disk images with rawrite for windows taken from a
> Linux distribution. A study of the mailing list archives suggested first
> that I should have used fdimage.exe so I tried that. Another look at the
> archives led me to download with NT's ftp instead of Internet Explorer.
> Finally I ftp'd the files to the old 2.2.8 machine and used dd. Still no
> luck. Back to the archives which were nearly unanimous in stating that the
> quality of diskettes can be the most significant factor
>
> So I tested the formatting of the floppies on the 2.2.8 machine - I haven't
> used the diskette drive more than a couple of times in three years - and
> yes, the format process indicated a deplorable quality on my diskettes, even
> ones which I had successfully used for such things as NT repair disks.
>
> Finally I tested one of the boot disks in another machine. It worked
> perfectly. Back to the 2.2.8 machine. No go. The diskette drive was
> clearly not up to scratch. I replaced it and at last I could start the
> installation procedure.
>
> The next thing to go wrong was in the information the installation program
> had collected from the 2.2.8 machine. Its suggestion for a host name was
> good - taken from rc.conf. Its domain name was good and the suggested IP
> address. So I didn't think anything of the fact that it had taken the first
> address in resolv.conf for the name server: 127.0.0.1. As a consequence it
> couldn't resolve the name of the chosen ftp server. Back to square one.
>
> Second time round everything went fine. The system loaded all the new
> executables, documents and manual pages - at least, it said it did: I
> haven't had time to check that yet! Time to reboot into the new system.
>
> Panic - not the kernel's, mine. I couldn't log in as root nor as myself. I
> tried the new root password, changed a few weeks ago; I tried the old root
> password. I tried - since this could be classed as a new installation - an
> empty password. I restarted the installation process and went in to
> sysinstall and tried to set the root password there, and create or modify an
> ordinary user. Neither worked.
>
> Back to the mailing list archives where I found the suggestion that I start
> in single user mode when I could change the root password. This i did -
> changed it 'back' to its new value, rebooted, logged on as root and changed
> my personal password 'back' to what it was and, hooray, I've got a
> functioning machine.
>
> The only thing I don't yet know is how typical it is of the proper 4.1
> structure. There was, for example, a significant change in the startup
> files somewhere between 2.2.8 and 3.1. In 2.2.8 you had one rc.conf in /etc
> and you did all your alterations in that. In 3.1 there is a directory
> /etc/default which contains a standard rc.conf. In /etc you create a new
> rc.conf in which you just change the parameters you need to change, and
> insert such network things as IP address, default router, subnet mask and so
> forth.
>
> But this sort of thing I'll have to take a look at tomorrow. For now I've
> discovered that something has gone wrong with the configuration of ssh2 on
> the new machine, and I can't get in from home to take a look. :(
>
> Probably the most significant thing I've learnt from today's exercise, apart
> from the fact that, if one takes it slowly and logically, even a greenhorn
> can get there in the end, is that, whatever happens to you, it has probably
> happened to someone else before, and been solved, and that means that it's
> in there, hiding away in the mailing list archives and it is just a question
> of framing the right query parameters to dig it out and get the answer you
> are looking for. And that's a lot better for all users of the mailing list
> than firing a question off to the list asking the same thing that has been
> asked a dozen times already.
>
> If you've stayed with me this far, well done. I didn't intend it to be so
> long when I started, but I thought there might be some tips in there for
> others who may be contemplating the same type of upgrade, even if it isn't
> as big as the one from 2.2.8 to 4.1.
>
> mvh/regards
>
> James
>
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