Upgrading very old installation

[krad]

On 15 July 2011 22:12, Balázs Mátéffy <repcsike at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 15 July 2011 22:46, Roland Smith <rsmith at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 08:20:52AM -0400, Jaime Kikpole wrote:
> > > I'm running a FreeBSD 6.x server that hasn't been updated in about 1.5
> > years.
> > >
> > > atlas:~>uname -mprs
> > > FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE-p8 i386 i386
> >
> > > I've been using the cvsup/make method of upgrades for years and only
> > > used freebsd-upgrade once.  I'm not sure if either method can handle a
> > > 6.x to 8.x upgrade.
> >
> > They are tested for upgrading to the next major version. Who knows if it
> > will
> > work across two major versions? Personally I wouldn't want to be the one
> ot
> > try it out. :-)
> >
> > > I also have a bunch of ports in this server (e.g. apache, postfix,
> > > etc.)  Once the OS is updated, should I just portupgrade them all?
> >
> > Doesn't work reliably across major version updates. When updating to a
> > newer
> > major version, the best way is to delete all ports (save their config
> files
> > of course), scrub the /usr/local tree clean and then re-install them.
> >
> > Matthews advice of re-installing 8.2 on a second harddrive is probably
> the
> > easiest and safest way to go.
> >
> > Roland
> > --
> > R.F.Smith
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
> > [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
> > pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
> >
>
> Hi,
>
> I would try to update the split mirror of the 6.4 to 8.2, I did manage to
> update couple of years back from Releng6 to Current 8 :).
>
> Did the usual make kernel / world stuff mergemaster prebuild in the middle
> and mergemaster after the update then I rebuilt all the ports.
>
> I recently did a 6.4-STABLE > 8.2-RELEASE-p2 migration to another server,
> but without using only some initial old config files  from the old system
> because I had to build a better environment with other software for the
> same
> role (almost the same thing that Matt recommended you). For me this is a
> longer procedure then updating all the software and checking for maybe now
> deprecated options and other problems.
>
> So I think its down to your level of knowledge and personal preference (
> whether you want to check what is to problem in case something goes wrong-
> I
> like this because I get to know the system and the inner workings in more
> detail). I personally don't like freebsd-update, and if your are new to the
> build from source way, you should really go with building up from scratch,
> then migrate.
>
> In case you want to update have a WORKING backup, and do a test run for the
> update (restore your 6.4 on a test machine and try to update it) before you
> bring down the productive system.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Regards,
>
> Balazs.
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Also one thing to watch with ports is thing like lang/php tend to jump a
point release or a major release. Its kind of anoying in my opinion that
lang/php can be php v4, 5.2 or 5.3 depending on what version of the os you
run, when there is stall a php52 port in say 8-stable. Makes
keeping consistent php versions more difficult. In my experience portmaster
is better than portupgrade as it doesnt have to mess around with binary dbs
of the ports