FreeBSD 4.x EoL

[Kris Kennaway]

On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 07:07:22PM -0400, Michael W. Oliver wrote:
> Colin,
> 
> Thanks for the verbose and reasoned explanation.  Since the email last
> week, I have taken the opportunity to upgrade two machines, one here and
> one remote (both with serial console) from 4.9->5.5->6.2PRE, and while I
> can't say that I did it blindfolded, it wasn't too painful.  The upgrade
> instructions at...
> 
> http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/migration-guide.html
> 
> ...were as close to perfect as could be (and for those who might ask me
> for a step-by-step howto, look to the above URL).  A few things that I
> should mention to others trying this are...
> 
> 0. Backup, and then check your backups!
> 
> 1. Be prepared to spend a lot of time in single-user mode, especially
> for the 4->5 step, because there is a LOT for mergemaster to do.  The
> step from 5->6 is not nearly as painful.  I didn't try to do the
> installworld and mergemaster in multiuser, and if you do then have a
> bigger set than I do.
> 
> 2. Trust the migration guide when it says to use a default kernel
> configuration file unless you are 100% prepared to reap what you sow.
> 
> 3. Be prepared to spend a lot of time (depending on the speed of your
> machines) rebuilding all of your ports.  Don't skimp on this step.
> 
> 4. On one of my machines (the local one, thank God!), I started getting
> weird pauses and bus errors when trying to rebuild my ports, and then
> noticed that the acpi.ko wasn't being loaded at boot.  Turns out that I
> had disabled ACPI in the BIOS back when the machine was originally built
> for v4.  Since switching on ACPI in the BIOS, those issues have totally
> cleared.

Good advice.

You can make step 3 easier by using the precompiled packages where
possible, e.g. "portupgrade -faP"

Kris
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