From owner-freebsd-stable  Mon Sep 17 15:40:18 2001
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To: "Chojin" <freebsd@tarakan-network.com>
Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG,
	"George V. Neville-Neil" <gnn@neville-neil.com>
Subject: Re: Problems getting STABLE running on a VAIO 505TL 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 18 Sep 2001 00:11:32 +0200."
             <014c01c13fc5$b8c65f40$0245a8c0@chojin> 
Date: Mon, 17 Sep 2001 15:40:00 -0700
From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net>
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> From: "Chojin" <freebsd@tarakan-network.com>
> Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 00:11:32 +0200
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG
> 
> Hi,
> 
> It's normally
> cvsup
> make buildworld
> make installworld
> mergemaster
> 
> and after only,
> 
> make buildkernel
> make installkernel

I am baffled why people continue to suggest that the proper sequence
for system rebuilds is wrong. And often in ways that could result in
truly catastrophic failures.

To explain why /usr/src/UPDATING has the order it does:
cvsup (well, that has to be first since you can't build from updated
       sources without the updated sources.)
make buildworld (This is the single most complex step in the rebuild.
                 And, it has NO impact on the running system. It must
                 precede either a buildkernel or installworld.)
make kernel (This simply is a short way of entering "make buildkernel
             && make installkernel". You do this so you can make sure
             that you have a bootable kernel built on the new system
             sources and objects. But the new executables are not yet
             installed, making it easy to fall back to the old system
             should the new kernel fail to boot.)
Reboot to single-user mode (This is a safety think. Installing  new
                            system over the existing one usually
                            works, but it's far from safe!)
make installworld (You KNOW that the new kernel works and that all of
                   the new binaries built, so it's time to take the
		   first step that is really hard to back out of if
                   there are problems.)
mergemaster (This is really a "cleanup" item, although it is a very
             important one.)
Reboot to normal (You're done!)

Building and installing the kernel after installing world is risky,
especially if changes in userland cause the old kernel to not work
well with it. It gets especially ugly if building the kernel should
fail!

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634

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