Help! Upgrade from fbsd 5.4 to 8.x

[Amitabh Kant]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 9:38 AM, Jeff Mitchell <skeezix at skeleton.org> wrote:

>
>        Hello my friends,
>
>        I've just noticed one of my beloved headless shell boxen is FreeBSD
> 5.4; its a workhorse I've been neglecting far too long and I'd really like
> to bring it up to 'current' (say fbsd 8.x). For awhile it was held back by
> very specific applications I had to support, but I'm in the clear now.
>
>        Given the age of the installation, I'm wondering what the
> recommended upgrade path would be.
>
>        The obvious options are..
>
>        1 - upgrade step by step; go from fbsd 5.4 to 6.4 (say) to 7.2 (say)
> to 8.0
>
>        2 - one big-ass upgrade from 5.4 to 8 (*fear*)
>
>        3 - yank the drive, slap a giant new fat drive in there, do a full
> fbsd 8.0 install, and then migration from old drive as needed
>
>
I would suggest going in for 3 too, but then you would get better
suggestions on this list.


>
>        Aside -- whats the recommended way to stay on top of upgrades
> anyway? It used to be a tortuous process back 5 years ago, but hopefully
> things are much more streamlined now .. nightly 'make upgrade' ftw :)
>
>                jeff
>
>
Take a look at freebsd-update (
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/updating-freebsdupdate.html).

Amitabh Kant