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Date:      Mon, 9 Sep 2002 09:31:19 +0200
From:      Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se>
To:        Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk>
Cc:        Duncan Anker <d.anker@au.darkbluesea.com>, freebsd-questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Upgrading from 3.4 to 4.6
Message-ID:  <20020909073118.GA11305@falcon.midgard.homeip.net>
In-Reply-To: <20020909065313.GA9574@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi>
References:  <3D7C2919.5040701@au.darkbluesea.com> <20020909065313.GA9574@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi>

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On Mon, Sep 09, 2002 at 07:53:13AM +0100, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> 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

The change from a.out to elf was between 2.2.x and 3.x.  3.x uses elf
by default.

> 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.

Otherwise I agree.  Such a large jump is very likely to cause some kind
of problems.  I would recommend taking the long route. ( -> 3.5-stable
-> 4.1.1-release -> 4-stable)  It might well be faster in practice
since you are less likely to run into problems.

>  
> > 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?


-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013@student.uu.se

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