How to upgrade FreeBSD release

Christopher Lane colane at inteliport.com
Tue May 10 06:23:08 PDT 2005


Simon Striker wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I am pretty newby to FreeBSD and I have one question. I have some Linux
> (Slackware) servers and I intend to reinstall them with FreeBSD.
> 
> When I will have to upgrade something on them, I will do that with portupgrade.
> But when yesterday FreeBSD 5.4 released I wondered how could I upgrade to newer
> release?
> 
> If for instance one day I will administrate 30 servers, will I have to reinstall
> them all with new release or is there any other way to upgrade to newer release?
> 
> I would like to hear about your experiences with server administration.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any response or piece of advice!
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Simon

Reinstall is not necessary.  In short, get the 5.4 release source 
somehow (cvsup, for example), and build/install new system binaries and 
kernel.  Freebsd handbook section 19 details the upgrade process pretty 
well - start reading there.  If this is your first upgrade, I don't have 
to tell you to try it on a non production box first ^_^

As far as doing 30 or more servers, I've never done it so this is a bit 
of speculation.  Look into using nfs or setting up a local cvsup server 
for distributing the source.  The archives might have more information 
on this subject.

Chris


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list