upgrading form 4.2 to 5.x

[epilogue]

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 17:14:22 -0400
epilogue <epilogue at allstream.net> wrote:

> On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 14:50:13 +0200
> Remko Lodder <remko at elvandar.org> wrote:
> 
> > Brent Bailey wrote:
> > 
> > > Hello,
> > > My company has been asked to help with the upgrade of several Freebsd
> > > systems that are pretty old. The customer is running a file server
> > > samba also running apache running FBSD 4.2,  he wants to upgrade
> > > using cvsup & the make buildworld procedure to upgrade to 5.x. Im
> > > very familier with the make buildworld procedure however there have
> > > been significant changes between 4.2 & 5.x  so is this something that
> > > can be done without many problems ?
> 
> hello brent,
> 
> though i don't know anyone who has gone this route, i imagine it is
> possible.  the reason most people don't cvsup from 4.x to 5.x is because
> there is a fundamental change in the filesystem (details of which escape
> me now - check the release notes at freebsd.org).

it bugged me not to remember, so i had a look.  it is UFS1 for 4.x vs. UFS2
for 5.x (which can still deal with UFS1).  the following is a very
informative article, one to which should not only help you decide, but to
which you can direct your client, should you so be inclined:

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.2.1R/early-adopter.html


epi

p.s.:  removed stable from the post.

> by simply cvsupping, you
> will _not_ be able to take advantage of the new filesystem.
> 
> if your customer insists upon 5.x, it would probably be best to prepare a
> full back-up then:
> 
> a) take the machine down, make a fresh install of 5.x, then load back
> data.
> 
> b) build and configure a parallel 5.x machine, load it with the backed-up
> data, then find a new use for the 4.x series machine.
> 
> hth.
> 
> 
> cheers,
> epi
> 
> > > Aside from reading throught the /usr/src/UPDATING file are
> > > there things i should look out for being that the 2 versions are so
> > > differrent.
> > > 
> > > personally i would recommend going to the lastest stable release
> > > 4.10-p2
> > > 
> > > I welcome this lists thoughts & opions on this matter
> > > 
> > > thank in advance for any help :-)
> > 
> > Hey Brent,
> > 
> > FreeBSD 5.x has not yet been described as production release ready.
> > So your customer is best advised to use the 4.x branch, and indeed at 
> > the moment that is 4.10 (and the patches afterwards ofcourse).
> > 
> > However i am running FreeBSD 5.x as production server in 2 colocated 
> > boxes without any problems. So it does not mean that it's crashing all 
> > the time, but there might be bugs that can cause downtime for your 
> > customer, and he should be willing to risk that problem if you want to 
> > upgrade to 5.x. If he prefers stablitity, and little downtime you do 
> > best to upgrade to the latest 4 release with patches.
> > 
> > Since it's a very long while back that i runned 4.x (4.3 ...) i can't 
> > remember anymore what the huge differences are, perhaps someone else
> > can describe that to you.
> > 
> > Cheers!
> > 
> > -- 
> > Kind regards,
> > 
> > Remko Lodder                   |remko at elvandar.org
> > Reporter DSINet                |remko at dsinet.org
> > Projectleader Mostly-Harmless  |remko at mostly-harmless.nl
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