Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2007 07:51:20 -0500 From: Josh Paetzel <josh@tcbug.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: David Yeske <dyeske@gmail.com>, Erik Cederstrand <erik@cederstrand.dk> Subject: Re: remote binary upgrade from 4.10 to 6.2 Message-ID: <200711020751.24469.josh@tcbug.org> In-Reply-To: <472ACA9A.2090903@cederstrand.dk> References: <85bdae4e0711011137m930c7e4w9ce5920b5d61f7f7@mail.gmail.com> <472ACA9A.2090903@cederstrand.dk>
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--nextPart2267098.ZCt8WDVckK Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline On Friday 02 November 2007 01:58:34 am Erik Cederstrand wrote: > David Yeske wrote: > > I have a lot of appliances in the field running FreeBSD. These > > machines do not have a working compiler. They need to be upgraded > > from FreeBSD 4.10 to FreeBSD 6.2. Has anyone gone through this > > successfully? Does anyone have pointers on a clean way to do this? > > Due to the lack of console support for most of these machines, booting > > from the 6.2 cd will not work. This has to be a remote binary > > upgrade. I need to have FreeBSD 4.10 install FreeBSD 6.2, although > > this could be done in stages with multiple reboots. I want to avoid > > upgrading from FreeBSD 4.10 to 5.5 to 6.2. It appears that FreeBSD > > 6.2 runs just fine on UFS1. > > First, I should mention that I have not done something like this before. > However, I think it would help if you could be a little more specific. > What are the specs of the machine (CPU, RAM, disk)? How remote are they > (i.e. "next building" or "Greenland")? How many appliances need > upgrading? Do you control the network they're attached to? > > A couple of ideas: > 1) As you say, the official advice is 4.10 -> 5.5 -> 6.2. You could > cross-compile the 5.5 world + kernel on a build machine and > installworld/kernel on the appliance. Reboot, and repeat for 6.2. This > assumes you have the disk space for the new world/kernel, or that you > can at least NFS mount a remote /usr/obj. > > 2) If you have the disk space, you can create another partition, place a > complete 6.2 distribution there (compiled on a build machine) and change > the boot loader to boot the new partition. > > 3) If you are able to PXE boot the machine, you could do a network > install of the appliance. > > 4) If you control the network, you could build a kernel with NFS_ROOT > support so you're independent on the local disk. Wipe the disk and > install a new distribution there. > > 5) Finally, if you have the RAM, you could build a kernel with MFS_ROOT > support, place a memdisk image on the local disk and proceed as 4) > > Erik Just in case there is any doubt, a remote upgrade from source is more invol= ved=20 than 4.10 -> 5.5 -> 6.2 The supported upgrade path across major version numbers has always been fro= m=20 the last release of the old to the first release of the new, and in the 5.x= =20 era there wasn't a direct upgrade path from 5.0 -> 5.5, you needed to do=20 5.0 -> 5.3 -> 5.5 so your upgrade path from source really is.... 4.10 -> 4.11 -> 5.0 -> 5.3 -> 5.5 -> 6.0 -> 6.2 There may be cases where you can skip a step, but then you venture in to th= e=20 land of unsupported upgrades. I'm not suggesting you go this route, just giving you more motivation to=20 explore other options! =2D-=20 Thanks, Josh Paetzel PGP: 8A48 EF36 5E9F 4EDA 5A8C 11B4 26F9 01F1 27AF AECB --nextPart2267098.ZCt8WDVckK Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQBHKx1MJvkB8SevrssRArf0AJoC8HzCLp0lPVGpcgyW0hHoQd6SegCgi6zO rxNGyPQayXNILsPQo9WbpAo= =LUoE -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart2267098.ZCt8WDVckK--
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