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Jonathan Horne writes:

>  ive seen several articles on the net, and of course, no one
>  agrees on the exact steps to take to update your system.  my
>  question is, is it safe to 'mergemaster'

	Yes.

>			and 'make installworld' while still up and running?

	Absolutely not.  (Has someone, somewhere, done it?  Yes.  Would
I do it even for an experiemental machine?  Only if you put a gun to
my head.)

>  or do I
>  just need to bite the downtime-bullet, and put it in single user?

	The "downtime-bullet" can be pretty small: it takes me 15 < T
< 30 minutes on a P4/2.25 Ghz with 80 Mb/s SCSI disks.


				Robert Huff