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Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2018 16:04:21 -0800 (PST)
From: Don Lewis <truckman@FreeBSD.org>
Subject: Re: Ancient FreeBSD update path
To: Mathieu Arnold <mat@FreeBSD.org>
cc: Andrea Brancatelli <abrancatelli@schema31.it>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
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On 19 Jan, Mathieu Arnold wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 19, 2018 at 01:28:41PM +0100, Andrea Brancatelli wrote:
>> 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.
> 
> The *supported* upgrade strategy is to upgrade to the latest version of
> your current branch, and jump from latest version to latest version.  So
> 8.4 -> 9.3 -> 10.4 -> 11.1. (Note that you can stay at 10.4, it still is
> supported.)

Only until October 31, 2018.  At this point I'd go all the way to 11.1
to avoid going through the pain of another major OS version upgrade in
the nearish future.