bootstrapping

[Peter Wemm]

Adriaan de Groot wrote:
> So, while I'm waiting for my K8V to be RMA'ed, I'm thinking about how to go 
> about integrating this amd64 box into my network and getting it running. I 
> gather there's no really working cvsup, and David's snapshot build from way 
> back is (a) from wayback (b) unstable under load.

cvsup works for for text mode.  Just dont try using the GUI.

Personally, I've installed about 6 or 7 amd64 systems over the last two
weeks.  I've taken 5.1-RELEASE cdrom, built a new kernel, rebooted
with that, and then done a buildworld/installworld/mergemaster.

It might be possible to upgrade in-place from an i386 release to amd64, but
I have never tried it.  I expect it would be rather exciting since we try
and do things like run #!/bin/sh in scripts in the middle of installworld.
So, if /bin/sh becomes an amd64 binary while you're running your i386
kernel, it will not work very well.

> I've got several running systems, both -STABLE and -CURRENT, with cvsupped 
> /usr/src's. The /usr/src's are NFS exported, and I've got a spare cheap-ass 
> NIC (yes, an RTL 8029). Supposing I boot a 4-STABLE drive with rl(4) in place
     
> in an amd64 box - what do I need to do to get it up to speed (heck, let's 
> make it a 5-CURRENT drive, since we've got the 4-to-5 upgrade otherwise as 
> well).
> 
> - do I need to cvsup anything special? extra branches? are all the sources fo
    r 
> all the architectures normally in a /usr/src/sys?

Start with a working amd64 system, and do whatever it takes to update to
a -current kernel.  If that means using rsync from another box, tar,
cp -r over nfs, whatever, then thats what is needed.  Just get a fresh
/usr/src/sys and build a kernel and boot it.  Then you should be on a
stable footing to finish the world build.

BTW; Dont use 'buildkernel' for the first step.  Use config manually
and restart the kernel build if it crashes in the middle.

> - does X "just build" then?

Yes, builds and installs and actually works.  (He says as he types on
an XFree86-4.3.0 port built on amd64).

kde3 etc have build problems over a disagreement about which shared libs
are supposed to be there.  The same problem exists on i386, but it isn't
fatal there.  i386 can do impure shared libs (text relocations which defeat
the "shared" part of the shared objects), amd64 cannot.

> Getting all this (and the machine) together ought to take me a while, and I 
> promise to be quite while that happens :)

It should be quite an adventure.  If it'll help get started, I'm happy
to take a generic kernel and matching libc.so.5 and put it somewhere
so that folks starting from 5.1-REL or David's snapshot have an easier
time getting started.  That will be enough to be able to run cvsup and
do a full buildworld and go from there.

Cheers,
-Peter
--
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5