From owner-freebsd-questions  Tue Jun  6 12:18: 2 2000
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From: Brian Hechinger <wonko@users.tmok.com>
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Subject: Re: softupdates
In-Reply-To: <022a01bfcfe6$fa350670$ca406f8f@mdacc.tmc.edu> from Jonathan Fosburgh at "Jun 6, 2000  1:42:25 pm"
To: fosburgh@flash.net (Jonathan Fosburgh)
Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 15:25:12 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: drek@zupa.bigstudios.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Reply-To: wonko@entropy.tmok.com
X-Useless-Header: why? because i can.
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Jonathan Fosburgh drunkenly mumbled...
> FYI, I have been bit by this bug too, with softupdates enabled.
> Fortunately, most of /var survived, unfortunately, /var/db/pkg was hosed and
> fsck still can't clean it.  For the most part, however, softupdates have
> only been helpful.  I only loose data now if I have a panic (which I don't
> think has happened since I upgraded to 4.0 some time ago), X locks up, or
> there was a power outage right at a time when a file was being updated.
> Without softupdates, I often would loose a number of files in the above
> cases, now maybe one, and that is rare.

so this says to me i want to start using softupdates.  this machine has never
paniced besides the floppy instance.  so i'm not expecting to have much
trouble, rather, when i do have trouble, i want to minimize the damage.

should i consider upgrading from 3.4-stable to 4.0-stable?  what is the
best way to go about this with minimum downtime?  should i even bother with
make buildworld;make kernel;make installworld;mergemaster;etc.. or should i
just pop the 4.0-release cd in and do an upgrade.  

thanks,

-brian


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