Upgrading from 6.2-RELEASE?

[Chuck Swiger]

On Oct 19, 2011, at 11:55 AM, Kurt Buff wrote:
> I have gotten custody of an old machine running the aforementioned,
> and it's in production. I can take it down for a couple of hours if
> necessary, but would prefer to have it down as little as possible.

The most straightforward solution would be to build out and validate a new system running FreeBSD-7.4 or 8.2, and drop it in place of the old box.  If all is good, decommission the old hardware.

> What are my options for getting it to a supported release - looking at
> the handbook it doesn't appear the the freebsd-update utility will
> work in this case, as it's not 6.3? Can I, for instance, boot from a
> CD of a supported version and do an upgrade, or am I stuck doing a
> download of sorce for 7.0-RELEASE, compiling that, and then an
> freebsd-update to 7.4?

You can do either.  However, it's probably easier to just download and burn the 7.4 or 8.2 image, and do an upgrade directly than it would be do upgrade via source to 7.0-RELEASE and then try freebsd-update.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck