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Date:      Sun, 5 May 2002 18:50:27 -0400 (EDT)
From:      John Mills <jmmills@telocity.com>
To:        FreeBSD-questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Baby Steps: So far, so good. What now, prithee ...
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.4.21.0205051819290.1261-100000@otter.mills-atl.com>

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Hello -

Still learning to pedal in FreeBSD, and still need training wheels.

1) I started with the 4.5-RELEASE CD set installed in a trash-pick Cyrix
   6x86 and 16 MBy RAM, and it seems to be doing fine (now that I opened
   a peripheral slot in the back to allow the PS fan to draw some air into
   Athe box!).

2) I ran cvsup against the 'standard-supfile' from the CD, pulling against
   RELENG_4_5 and it went fine (creating a source tree, not a CVS copy).

3) I ran 'make world' (not 'make buildworld' nor make 'installworld') and
   it ran to completion (once some fresh air could get to those thrashing
   little transistors inside!)

4) I made some simple configuration changes: no SCSI nor USB, and - I hope
   - just a driver for the NIC I actually have: DEC 'tulip' for a LinkSys
   NC-100/2 (it works in Linux - let me know if I had a better choice),
   then ran 'make buildkernel' to completion with no errors. (Well, I did
   go back once and change options in my CONFIG file - I had shut off a
   required option, or rather left an unwanted driver.)

NOW -- I want to ask about my next steps.

I would like to test my new kernel, and also my new 'world' - so far as I
know, I have installed neither.

I suppose I should make a 'safety' copy of my current kernel. I expect I
should copy '/kernel' to some new name such as '/kernel.orig'. Comments?

I see there is also a '/kernel.GENERIC' which 'diff's-out identical to
'/kernel'. Is this part of the 4.5-RELEASE CD installation? Does it
correspond to a build from the 'GENERIC' config file using the
4.5-RELEASE 'world' toolset?

I understand that 'make installkernel' will also keep a copy of my old
kernel as '/kernel.old' or something close. Is that correct?

Basically I would like the new kernel to be set as a non-default
selection. How do I do this? Rename so the original kernel appears as
'/kernel' and the new one as [say] '/kernel.foobar'?

Should I go through a configuration step the first time I boot the new
kernel like the one I did before installing from the CD?

What should I expect will _not_ work when I boot the new kernel? %8-)

When and how should I install my new set of 'world' results, and is there
some cleanup I need to do after installation?

Thanks for any comments.

 - John Mills


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