5.5 to 6.1 upgrade

Greg Byshenk freebsd at byshenk.net
Mon Aug 21 23:17:04 UTC 2006


On Mon, Aug 21, 2006 at 11:52:02PM +0200, Stefan Bethke wrote:
> Am 21.08.2006 um 18:19 schrieb Ian Smith:

> >I recently (without drama) upgraded a 5.4-RELEASE system to
> >FreeBSD 5.5-STABLE #1: Tue Aug  1 11:11:20 EST 2006
> >for 'target practice' at least, on the way to 6.1-STABLE

> >I was preparing to portupgrade everything next, when I wondered:

> >a) should I upgrade from RELENG_5 straight to RELENG_6 or should I be
> >stopping off at 6.1-RELEASE along the way first?  and
 
> I'd go straight to 6-stable. Make sure you have a good backup, even  
> if you stop over at 6.1.

I see no reason not to go directly to 6-stable (if that is what you plan
to run); I've done it with multiple machines, and just jump right to the
6-stable version that is active on the machines running 6.x.

Though I've had no problems, I second the recommendation to have a good
backup.  Also, if you don't have a known-good 6-stable build, you might
want to upgrade to the GENERIC kernel.
 
> >b) do I need to upgrade all existing ports (way out of date) before  
> >the source upgrade, or can I be confident of doing that from 6.1
> >(-R or -S)?

> >FWIW: a wee Celeron 300, so minimising upgrade build times is  
> >desirable.
 
> Unless you have business critical apps running (downtime must be  
> minimal), you can wait until you've completed the upgrade to 6- 
> stable, and then run portupgrade -af.  If you'd like to run the  
> portupgrade overnight, you might want to define BATCH, and possibly  
> set any port building options in /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf,  
> otherwise, the port builds will be frequently interrupted by make  
> config questions.

It shouldn't be necessary to rebuild ports before the upgrade.  If 
there is something running that is critical, you might want to upgrade
it first, just be sure, but it probably isn't necessary.  I upgraded a
workstation with 200+ ports installed, and saw no problems (I can't
for certain that nothing was broken before I upgraded the ports, but
I experienced no problems). 


-- 
greg byshenk  -  gbyshenk at byshenk.net  -  Leiden, NL


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