From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jul 24 00:08:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id AAA14171 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 00:08:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mail1-im.etl.go.jp (mail1-im.etl.go.jp [192.50.105.9]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id AAA14152 for ; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 00:08:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from etlpom.etl.go.jp (etlpom.etl.go.jp [192.31.200.9]) by mail1-im.etl.go.jp (8.8.5/3.5Wpl1-96112918) with ESMTP id QAA22648 for ; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:08:26 +0900 (JST) Received: from etliss.etl.go.jp (etliss.etl.go.jp [192.31.205.101]) by etlpom.etl.go.jp (8.8.5/3.5Wpl4-ETL_MASTER) with SMTP id QAA26469 for ; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:08:24 +0900 (JST) Received: by etliss.etl.go.jp (SMI-8.6/6.4J.6-ETL.SLAVE) id QAA00476; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:08:45 +0900 Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:08:45 +0900 Message-Id: <199707240708.QAA00476@etliss.etl.go.jp> From: Robert Inder To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Documentation for install omits important information Phone: (+81) 298 54 5314 Organisation: NEDO Fellow, visiting Electrotechnical Laboratory Disorganisation: Rampant Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I am currently running 2.0.5. ((Yeah, it is old. But it goes just fine...)) The advent of a new S3VIRGE graphics card is provoking me to upgrade my X server, which in turn has led me to want to upgrade to 2.2.2. The installation documents for 2.2.2 talk about "upgrading from an earlier release". The recommend 2.0.5 users to "do a fresh installation". Now, I'd like to know what this "slice" stuff is all about, but OK, I'll believe I should do a fresh install... But what does that mean? What will it do? If I were trying to "upgrade", it is clear that it would be working with my existing file system, changing or creating directories and/or files within it as required. The installation documentation talks about starting from a new chunk of empty disk, creating partitions and so forth. What I want to know is what will happen if I try to do a "fresh installation" into a partition that already contains a FreeBSD file system? Will it work with that file system, or blow it away and start again? I obviously need to preserve some files (e.g. the system/kernel configuration files). But where can I put them that will be out from under foot? Just another directory? On the other UNIX partition within the same DOS partition? Into a DOS file system? ((Before you ask: I do have a backup of the system, taken a couple of weeks ago, but more or less current. And I'll happily put recent changes onto floppies. But my machine is a stand alone one: a bulk restore will be a medium-scale pain, as I'll have to shift the machine to work, get it onto the ethernet, track down a exabyte drive blah blah... In other words, I really want to do the upgrade using the machine alone, if that is possible. I've probably got enough disk space to move everything out of the way, but I'd feel a lot happier if there was an explicit statement of where "out of the way" was!)) TO be on the save side, I'll probably copy everything into a DOS partition on a different disk from the one where I'm going to put FreeBSD: surely *that* ought to be out of the way! But I'll be doing it wondering whether in fact all I needed to do was... well, something simpler. Whoever wrote the INSTALL.TXT file presumably thought the answer was too obvious to bother mentioning. But I`m a (sophisticated/informed) UNIX *user* who knows as little about the innards of the system as I can get away with, and it isn't obvious to me! And maybe, when I start into the install procedure, everything will become clear. But life would be better if the INSTALL document had a sentence or two telling me what would happen if I followed its advice! ((BTW: I realise this is a small point, and I don't want to seem like I'm carping. Overall, I've found FreeBSD a very solid operating system, and it has in my opinion put WIndows '95 to shame in terms of reliabilty and level of frustration induced---for instance, I've never once noticed a device "become uninstalled" under FreeBSD... Keep up the good work. )) Robert.