Binary upgrade from legacy version + ports

[Svein Halvor Halvorsen]

Svein Halvor Halvorsen wrote:
>> I want to upgrade two freebsd machines I have from 6.1-SECURITY
>> and 5.3-RELEASE respectively, to the latest 7.0 release of
>> FreeBSD. I don't want to cvsup and build, but prefer to use
>> prebuilt binaries. Also I'd like to avoid wiping the systems,
>> and starting afresh.

Matthew Seaman wrote:
> If your 6.1 system is using a system installed from one of the
> official iso images and hasn't been locally rebuilt (upgrading
> via freebsd-updates is OK though) then there is a quicker way.
> See
> 
> http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2007-11.html

Now this is what I'm talking about!

I can't relly remember anymore, since it's so long ago, but I'm
pretty sure I upgraded the box that is now 6.1 from some 5.x
version, taking a binary route. I can't find the instructions
anymore. Maybe I'm mistaken :-/

Upgrading FreeBSD across major versions is such a drag, that I
allways postpone it. And now it's way overdue. I guess I just have
to bite the bullet and wipe the system clean, and start afresh.

The 6.1 system seem to be running 7.0-p2 now, though. Thanks!
It is still upgrading ports. Fortunately this box does nothing
important, and is just my personal playground. If something gets
messed up, noe problem. I'm trying to upgrade the ports binary as
well, using "portupgrade -a -PP", and it seems to get the packages
from RELEASE, not the latest versions that are in the ports tree.
But as long as all ports use the same consistent set, I'm pretty
sure it will work out nicely. My local ports tree will be out of
sync, though, which might cause problems later?


Is there a problem using the prebuilt packages from STABLE on a
RELEASE box? If I want to run RELEASE, and still use the latest
packages? The ABI is consistent between STABLE and RELEASE, right?

Also, re: the freebsd-update, if I've built a system from source,
say 7.0-RELEASE. And I want to upgrade it binary to -p2. If my home
built system is basically like the prebuilt release, I should be
fine, but freebsd-update won't let me do this, right? Anyway to
overcome this?


	Thanks!
	Svein