upgrade questions 4.10 -> 5-stable

[Dariusz Kulinski]

Hello Bruce,

Tuesday, September 21, 2004, 8:41:16 AM, you wrote:

>> It's nice guide, but I personally think there few important thing stat
>> are missing (and I was trying to found answer, but without luck):
>> - what directories, should be especially backed up and restored after
>>   upgrade, I know /etc /usr/local/etc, /var/mail /var/cron /var/db
>>   what else?
> For the case of a reinstalling from installation media, what to
> restore depends on how you've configured your system.  It's beyond the
> scope of the document to try to enumerate all possible directories
> that might be holding data you care about.  At a bare minimum, things
> I usually care about on my systems can be found in /boot, /etc,
> /usr/local/etc, /var, and whereever home directories live.  Beyond
> that, it depends too much on how your own system is set up.  That's
> why you want to make sure you've saved *everything* to backup media,
> so if you miss restoring something you can always go back and get it
> later.

What about directories that I definitively shouldn't restore, for
example:
/usr/include /usr/lib most likely /bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /stand
and so on, maybe that could help me better.

>> - how to upgrade config files while while doing source upgrade, is it
>>   possible to use mergemaster, what are recommended steps?
>>   Overwrite all the new files and run mergemaster or there is better
>>   way?
> Step 16 of the source upgrade procedure says specifically to use
> "mergemaster -i".

That step was in source upgrade category, so I assumed it might not
be correct for binary upgrade.

>> - some other stuff that I just forgot

> Sorry, can't help you with that part.

What about ports, I know that I need to recompile them, but will they
work for that time?


>> Basically I would like make the migration flawlessly, and in shortest
>> time possible.
> In my experience, sometimes those two goals are at odds with each
> other.
> You didn't say anything about the machine(s) you're trying to upgrade,
> but if any of them happen to be providing mission-critical services, I
> highly recommend running through the upgrade process on a scratch
> machine first.  Or even better, build up a new system and gradually
> migrate data and services over to it.

It's not really mission-critical, but it's like that for me :)
It works as my mail/web server so I want to have shortest downtime
possible :)

-- 
Best regards,
 Dariusz                            mailto:takeda at takeda.tk
CCNA, SCSA, SCNA, LPIC, MCP certified
http://www.takeda.tk