From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Jan 4 19:20:17 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id TAA23894 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 19:20:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from BIGFUN.vwcom.com (BIGFUN.vwcom.com [151.197.101.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id TAA23887 for ; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 19:20:13 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from bmc@WillsCreek.COM) Received: from WillsCreek.COM (gw.willscreek.com [151.197.101.46]) by BIGFUN.vwcom.com (8.8.6/8.8.6) with ESMTP id WAA03384; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 22:15:02 -0500 (EST) Received: from current.willscreek.com (current.willscreek.com [172.16.87.1]) by WillsCreek.COM (8.8.8/8.8.5) with ESMTP id WAA03701; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 22:19:54 -0500 (EST) Received: (from bmc@localhost) by current.willscreek.com (8.8.8/8.8.5) id WAA12282; Sun, 4 Jan 1998 22:19:54 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 22:19:54 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801050319.WAA12282@current.willscreek.com> From: Brian Clapper MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Richard Balue Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Installing . . . In-Reply-To: <199801041700.RAA00954@olympus.apolloi.com> References: <199801041700.RAA00954@olympus.apolloi.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.23 under Emacs 19.34.1 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On 4 January, 1998, at 17:00 (GMT) Richard Balue wrote: > HI, > I am not clear about one thing in term of upgrading or > installing an newer version. Is it possible to keep all > current information on the drive in an upgrade? Or is > upgrading going to repartition the drives (basically reformatting)? > > I have version 2.1.x and need to upgrade to 3.0 snapshot, what > is the best way to get there? Don't know about 3.0, but I've upgraded from 2.0.5 to 2.1.5 to 2.1.7 to 2.2.2 to 2.2.5--and not lost a single piece of my own data. When you upgrade, you are thrown into the partition editor, but you merely need to mount the existing file systems; you don't need (nor should you necessarily) repartition anything. I'm assuming (without bothering to investigate) that 3.0 uses the same or similar upgrade procedures. If so, you should be safe. Of course, backing up what you value most deeply is always wise before upgrading, since anything can happen. Also, you'll probably want to print out two pieces of information before you begin. 1. Your current hardware configuration (the kernel config file should be sufficient, or the output of dmesg(8) may do as well). If you have anything installed in a place the generic kernel won't find it, you'll need to adjust the kernel's configuration when you boot off the installation floppy. Having the current configuration of your hardware in front of you helps. 2. /etc/fstab, so you don't have to remember which slice maps to which file system. I invariably forget to print them out, and then have to reboot and go get them (while swearing at myself) as soon as I get to the partition editor during the upgrade. ----- Brian Clapper, bmc@WillsCreek.COM, http://WWW.WillsCreek.COM/ A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done. -- Fred Allen