Binary upgrades?

[Matthew Seaman]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2004 at 05:37:56PM +0100, Kai Grossjohann wrote:

> I wonder if this could be made easier.  I'd be surprised if there
> wasn't a method of doing binary upgrades already.  For example, if we
> decided to track releases, would that enable us to do binary upgrades
> using sysinstall, say?  I vaguely remember having seen an upgrade
> option in there...

http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-update

It's still in development, so it hasn't been adopted yet as an
official FreeBSD thing, but that surely is just a matter of time.
Works exceedingly well, and because of Colin Percival's binary diff
tool, it's really very light weight in the bandwidth usage stakes.

It's available from ports, of course:

    security/freebsd-update

The 'binary upgrade' option in sysinstall is a different thing: it's
essentially a mechanism for wiping and replacing your current system
with that release version, backing up various important config files
as it does so.  You still need to repopulate your /etc directory by
merging the updated default contents with the saved versions, and it's
generally not as smooth to do as the more usual means of
{build,install} {world,kernel} and running mergemaster. (Unless you're
upgrading over a large number of versions or across a major version
number change).

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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