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Date: Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:04:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: Andrew Wright <andrewhw@ieee.org>
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To: Ivan Voras <ivoras@freebsd.org>
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: OpenBSD -> FreeBSD migration
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Ivan Voras wrote:

> Andrew Wright wrote:

>>   If both of these are true, I can simply install FreeBSD over
>>   top of the OpenBSD /, /var and /usr partitions, and then be
>>   able to mount the old /home.  Is this something people do?
>
> If you delete everything from all directories except /home, it might
> work. Otherwise, the risk of getting mixed binaries, libraries and
> scripts from both systems is too great.

I probably should have been more clear in my initial post -- I
am certainly intending on relabelling + reformatting partitions
for /, /usr, /var, /tmp and so on -- to try to run these with
a potential filesystem incompatbility (not to mention the potential
of mixed binaries) is just asking for trouble.

What I am hoping to do is run "dump | restore", as the various
userdata partitions are all on separate drives (in "a" partitions),
and I have enough space to dump the first one and compress it onto
another user-space drive, and similar jiggery-pokery (Doing this
will save _many_ media swaps, and thus much time).

Essentially, I am asking whether _readonly_ access works, for which
I will need FreeBSD to read the disklabel and the filesystem.

Thought I'd clear that up in case a perusal through the archives
steered anyone wrong later one.

Thanks to everyone who pointed out the "live" CD, I think that will
let me answer most, if not all, of my questions.

Andrew.