From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Oct 18 11:14:58 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B00E516A415 for ; Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:14:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jan.grant@bristol.ac.uk) Received: from diri.bris.ac.uk (diri.bris.ac.uk [137.222.10.112]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6404F43D95 for ; Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:14:29 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jan.grant@bristol.ac.uk) Received: from mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk ([137.222.16.62]) by diri.bris.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Ga9NE-0005HD-W9; Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:14:14 +0100 Received: from cse-jg.cse.bris.ac.uk ([137.222.12.37]:57904) by mail.ilrt.bris.ac.uk with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA:32) (Exim 4.50) id 1Ga9MF-0004t1-JO; Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:13:11 +0100 Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:13:11 +0100 (BST) From: Jan Grant X-X-Sender: cmjg@tribble.ilrt.bris.ac.uk To: "Michael W. Oliver" In-Reply-To: <20061017230722.GH8866@gargantuan.com> Message-ID: <20061018120336.H42237@tribble.ilrt.bris.ac.uk> References: <453531C9.7080304@freebsd.org> <20061017230722.GH8866@gargantuan.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-ILRT-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-ILRT-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (score=-1.288, required 6, autolearn=disabled, ALL_TRUSTED -1.44, AWL 0.15) X-ILRT-MailScanner-From: jan.grant@bristol.ac.uk X-Spam-Status: No X-Spam-Score: -1.3 X-Spam-Level: - Cc: FreeBSD Stable Subject: Re: FreeBSD 4.x EoL X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:14:58 -0000 On Tue, 17 Oct 2006, Michael W. Oliver wrote: > 1. Be prepared to spend a lot of time in single-user mode, especially > for the 4->5 step, because there is a LOT for mergemaster to do. The > step from 5->6 is not nearly as painful. I didn't try to do the > installworld and mergemaster in multiuser, and if you do then have a > bigger set than I do. If you're setting up machines that you're going to be upgrading like this in the future, I think it's _really_ worthwhile hacking out a couple of "root slices" - that is, space for a second / and /usr - to facilitate this. You can run mergemaster on a secondary copy of your /etc (this, of course, requries that the contents of /etc are relatively quiescent for this step) and tidy up by hand. You can perform a dump & restore followed by a source upgrade, a fresh source install or a binary upgrade ad lib; just reboot (with nextboot) when done. This also means you can keep the previous OS around for a while in case there are problems with the new one. For setups that aren't amenable to automated deployments this works pretty well and gives you a safety-net for upgrades. Cheers, jan -- jan grant, ISYS, University of Bristol. http://www.bris.ac.uk/ Tel +44 (0)117 3317661 http://ioctl.org/jan/ We thought time travel was impossible. But that was now and this is then.