Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 14:21:32 -0600 From: "Brian D. Woodruff" <wood@eris.quintessential.com> To: Greg Black <gjb@comkey.com.au> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 3.1 UNstable Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.19990330142132.009573e0@freeq.com> In-Reply-To: <19990330110358.25780.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> References: <3.0.6.32.19990328111310.008b1840@freeq.com> <3.0.6.32.19990327211654.008b91f0@freeq.com> <3.0.6.32.19990328111310.008b1840@freeq.com>
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At 09:03 PM 3/30/99 +1000, you wrote: >"Brian D. Woodruff" writes: > >> If you want to get 3.1-RELEASE or 3.1-STABLE (which is currently a link >> back to 3.1-RELEASE), you MUST use the floppy disks for 3.1-RELEASE, > >I don't want to belittle you or the troubles you've had with >this, but I think there's a point that's worth making here. > >When installing some new OS, you should always use the bits and >pieces that belong to that version of the OS. This is basic >stuff for anybody who wants to retain their sanity and applies >to all OSes, not just FreeBSD. Every version of FreeBSD I've ever used comes with a program called /stand/sysinstall which has an option called "upgrade". This option doesn't work if you're upgrading to 3.1 from *any* prior version, including 3.0. If it's that critical that an installer pick up all the bits and pieces, then an upgrade program should do that, or not be offered. The fact that this feature is not complete is an oversight which could have been avoided, and I would like to get that message to the authors, as a favor to them. My problem is solved, and I'll never make that mistake again, believe me! My purpose here is to make the product better for everyone. This is my contribution to the FreeBSD project. > >And, given all the hoopla about the change to ELF in 3.x and the >widely-publicised fact that the ELF transition was done in two >stages, any 3.x installs should have been screaming out to be >treated carefully. A user shouldn't have to know every file in the OS in order to upgrade to the newest version. I realize there are plenty of people out there who want to do this, and *do* do this, but I'm not one of them. Like Yahoo.com, I just want the most reliable system for my business to run on as I can get. FreeBSD is that system, and up until now, I've had no complaints whatsoever about it. I still have no complaints about it as an OS, however, the installer, at least on versions 3.0 and prior, doesn't install *all* the components you want from the location you told it to install from! Were this the case, I would have been able to install in 10 minutes (plus download time) like I always have, and not lose a whole day chasing down the solution to this obscure problem. Yes, I said obscure. Just because it's posted somewhere that there is a booby trap set on every FreeBSD users hard drive doesn't make it common knowledge. I use FreeBSD because it's good for my business, not because I want to become the foremost authority on the topic. I shouldn't have to be an authority on the topic just in order to keep a current version of it on my hard drive. In Greg Lehey's excellent book _The Complete FreeBSD_, the only reference to ELF in the index is on the chapter on Linux compatability, and even there it talks about it only as an object format that FreeBSD supports, and does not address installation at all. What I hope to accomplish here is to encourage the authors of the install/upgrade program to make said program compatable with all possible future modifications thereof. This mess could have been avoided, and I'll guarantee you haven't seen the last of it. BDW > >-- >Greg Black <gjb@acm.org> > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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