upgrade questions 4.10 -> 5-stable
Dariusz Kulinski
takeda at takeda.tk
Thu Sep 23 19:17:02 PDT 2004
Hello Bruce,
Thursday, September 23, 2004, 8:54:19 AM, you wrote:
>> 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.
> Here's the deal. For any of the systems I maintain, I wouldn't
> restore any of these from backups after a source upgrade because in
> general, those directories contain *only* files installed from the
> base system. But how can I tell how *you* have *your* system set up?
Well, I'm avoiding to change anything in system files, and all
additional stuff I'm actually putting in /usr/local.
I'm interested about directories that are changed by system/system
programs - I belive most confusing is /var in theory there shouldn't
be anything important there (well except logs), but I already noticed
there is mail, crontab jobs, informations what ports were installed
even mysql port install database there.
>> That step was in source upgrade category, so I assumed it might not
>> be correct for binary upgrade.
> You *asked* about the source upgrade procedure above.
I'm sorry, I see now. I wrote one thing but I was thinking about
another. I meant binary upgrade, sorry for the confusion.
> For binary upgrades, it's probably best to carefully examine the files
> in your backups and merge the changes in by hand. After a binary
> install, the old files will be gone, so there won't be anything for
> mergemaster to operate on.
Yes that's true, but using mergemaster is less work. And I still have
old files in backup.
> Good candidates for merging are: /etc/passwd, /etc/group, and
> /etc/rc.conf. Don't just blindly drop in your backup files.
So I see next step - selecting which files from /etc are needed to be
restored.
>> What about ports, I know that I need to recompile them, but will they
>> work for that time?
> We believe that most ports will work if you install the compat4x
> libraries and don't upgrade anything. But there's a few that *need*
> to be upgraded, due to changes in the statfs structure. Also if
> you're going to upgrade ports in the future, it's probably safest to
> reinstall all ports.
I see
>> 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 :)
> Then you want to take your time and do things carefully so that you
> don't have a longer downtime caused by screwing up the upgrade. I've
> had this happen more times than I can count (not on FreeBSD, but the
> experience applies).
Thank you very much for your tips on upgrading.
--
Best regards,
Dariusz mailto:takeda at takeda.tk
CCNA, SCSA, SCNA, LPIC, MCP certified
http://www.takeda.tk
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