Problem Building World

[Chris Hill]

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004, Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P. wrote:

> Cyber Dog wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> 	I'm working with a server currently running FreeBSD 4.6.  Clearly it
>> hasn't been updated too recently, and I've made it my goal to bring it into
>> the present.  This would be my first time rebuilding a FreeBSD OS.  I
>> started out by clearing out /usr/src, and doing a fresh cvsup with the
>> following supfile:
>> 
>> 
> <snip>

[more snip]

>> Stop in /usr/src.
>> [root at hostname src]#
>> 
>> As you can see, something's amiss here.  I don't understand why there would
>> be any inconsistencies...as I said; I did a fresh CVSup (multiple times in
>> fact).  Any help would be greatly appreciated!
>> 
>> -
>> Matt
>> 
>
> Hi, Matt:
>
> I'm certainly not an expert here, but it seems like
> it's an awful long way from 4.6 to 4.10. 
> Have you tried an intermediate update, say, 4.6 to 4.7
> [or 4.8]?
>
> So many changes occur over time; and by the time 4.10
> came out, 4.6 was very old*; so it's entirely possible that
> you might need to do a cvsup/buildworld routine to
> something a little closer to your box's date prior to
> attempting (and having any success) with 4.10.  You
> might try changing the 'cvs tag' in your supfile to
> RELENG_4_7 or RELENG_4_8 and going again....
>
> Kevin Kinsey
>
> *and probably past it's "EOL".  Whether or not, I'm sure
> it'd be nice if it _would_ build, but it's possible that the
> engineering team was under no compunction to test
> a migration from 4.6 directly to 4.10 at the time 4.10 was
> being tested for release, and therefore it wasn't (tested) ...
> like I said, I'm no expert, but a 'stepping stone' approach
> to the problem might work....

I did this exact upgrade (4.6 to 4.10) a while back, and I can endorse 
the 'stepping stone' procedure. I did a cvsup and rebuild from 4.6 to 
4.7, 4.7 to 4.8, etc. until 4.10. It's tedious and time-consuming, but 
the whole thing went surprisingly smoothly.

--
Chris Hill               chris at monochrome.org
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