From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Sep 9 0:31:32 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 807C737B405 for ; Mon, 9 Sep 2002 00:31:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from maild.telia.com (maild.telia.com [194.22.190.101]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DE30243E4A for ; Mon, 9 Sep 2002 00:31:24 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from erikt@midgard.homeip.net) Received: from d1o913.telia.com (d1o913.telia.com [195.252.44.241]) by maild.telia.com (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id g897VNMe010907 for ; Mon, 9 Sep 2002 09:31:23 +0200 (CEST) X-Original-Recipient: Received: from falcon.midgard.homeip.net (h62n2fls20o913.telia.com [212.181.163.62]) by d1o913.telia.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id JAA15524 for ; Mon, 9 Sep 2002 09:31:22 +0200 (CEST) Received: (qmail 11321 invoked by uid 1001); 9 Sep 2002 07:31:19 -0000 Date: Mon, 9 Sep 2002 09:31:19 +0200 From: Erik Trulsson To: Matthew Seaman Cc: Duncan Anker , freebsd-questions Subject: Re: Upgrading from 3.4 to 4.6 Message-ID: <20020909073118.GA11305@falcon.midgard.homeip.net> Mail-Followup-To: Matthew Seaman , Duncan Anker , freebsd-questions References: <3D7C2919.5040701@au.darkbluesea.com> <20020909065313.GA9574@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020909065313.GA9574@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.1i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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? -- Erik Trulsson ertr1013@student.uu.se To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message