Upgrading 4.11-STABLE to 5.4-STABLE

[Chuck Swiger]

Steve Bertrand wrote:
>>I want to upgrade my 4.11-STABLE server to 5.4-STABLE. I'm 
>>very used to using cvsup to upgrade between minor releases 
>>(IIRC the box was 4.9 or 4.10
>>originally) but a jump between major versions is scaring me a bit :)
> 
> Oddly enough, and a little OT, (but semi-within the topic) I'm trying to
> update a 5.0 box to RELENG_5 right now with several different errors,
> too many to mention (generally they occur after rebooting after my
> installkernel. I can subsequently reboot off of kernel.old, as always).

That's not surprising, if your kernel and userland are too far out of sync, 
lots of things won't work right like ps and ipfw and so forth.  If the kernel 
boots OK into single-user mode, it should be OK to do the installworld.

Anyway, you really don't want to stay with 5.0, even if it takes a reinstall 
from a 5.4 CD to get there....  :-)

> Since this is only a data box (running Samba), I'm not too worried, as
> I'll just reinstall...but I thought I'd throw it out there to see if
> there is a better approach to this particular upgrade
> (ie...incremental), as well as OP to get us both to STABLE.
> 
> Note I also have a real production box at the following with the same
> issue, however, it's much more relied apon, so an upgrade as opposed to
> rebuild solution would be nice:
> 
> FreeBSD pearl.ibctech.ca 4.11-STABLE FreeBSD 4.11-STABLE #4: Fri Jun 24
> 12:14:21 EDT 2005     steve at pearl.ibctech.ca:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/PEARL
> i386

Take full backups before you do anything.  The thing is, there is nothing wrong 
with a 4.11 system, either, especially if it is a uni-processor machine.  For 
SMP hardware, I'd be tempted to jump directly to 6.0 or wait for 6.1, rather 
than move to the middle/end of the 5.x releases.

Keeping your ports up-to-date is a bigger concern, but things like portaudit 
and the people working on submitting both security warnings and patches to the 
ports help...

-- 
-Chuck