Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002 07:53:13 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: Duncan Anker <d.anker@au.darkbluesea.com> Cc: freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Upgrading from 3.4 to 4.6 Message-ID: <20020909065313.GA9574@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> In-Reply-To: <3D7C2919.5040701@au.darkbluesea.com> References: <3D7C2919.5040701@au.darkbluesea.com>
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On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 02:52:41PM +1000, Duncan Anker wrote:
> I have some machines that need to be upgraded from FreeBSD 3.4 - I'm
> pretty sure I could follow the upgrade path 3.4 -> 3.5 STABLE ->
> 4.1.1-RELEASE -> 4.6, but I do have much better things to do with my time.
>
> What I want to know is, if I build a 4.6 kernel and world on another
> machine, can I NFS mount these and install the world and kernel with
> minimum fuss. I know there are a few things like devices changing and so
> on, but I'm hoping mergemaster can take care of things like that.
That's going to be exceedingly tricky, because of the change from
a.out to elf binary format between 3.x and 4.x. I won't say it's
impossible, but it's going to take extreme ju-ju to make it work.
Plus a box or two you can rehearse on locally before you try working
on your remote machines.
Other considerations aside, to do such a large jump in versions I'd
usually think about simply overwriting the 3.x system with a new
install of 4-STABLE or 4.6.2-RELEASE and then recover the local
configuration and so forth from backup.
> I don't have access to the console, so I have to perform the upgrades
> remotely - any solution involving being at the console to boot from
> floppies/CD is not an option.
Bummer. That makes the whole thing excessively difficult. You did
say "machines" above -- can you get some serial cables installed so
that you can pair up machines and use 'tip' on one to access the
console on a serial port on the other?
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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