learning to buildworld

[Chris Hill]

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006, Jonathan Horne wrote:

> [...] the installworld comes while in single user mode, and my 
> production server would see quite a bit of downtime over this.

Just a couple more data points. I have two machines, an elderly K6-2 
running at 400 MHz and a relatively modern P4 running at 3.4 GHz. 'make 
installworld' takes about 8 minutes on the slow machine, and just a few 
seconds on the fast one. Point being that you needn't have much downtime 
for this.

> ive seen several articles on the net, and of course, no one agrees on 
> the exact steps to take to update your system.  my question is, is it 
> safe to 'mergemaster' and 'make installworld' while still up and 
> running?  or do i just need to bite the downtime-bullet, and put it in 
> single user?

That's what I would do, but it depends on how lucky you feel. There are 
ways to get to the console without traveling to the colo.

HTH, and good luck.

--
Chris Hill               chris at monochrome.org
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