6.1-BETA4 installation report

[Martin Jackson]

Sam Leffler wrote:
> Martin Jackson wrote:
>>>> 1)  The upgrade errored out almost immediately on /var/empty, since 
>>>> it had been chflags'ed to nschg.  I went to the shell and chflags'ed 
>>>> that off, and upgrade continued.
>>>
>>> It's supposed to be that way, so something is wrong if this is causing
>>> problems :(
>>
>> Agreed. :)  Looking through the source to sysinstall, it looks like I 
>> should have a /boot/kernel.prev, but I don't.  Perhaps the install of 
>> base went more poorly than I thought?  I wound up not having 
>> /boot/kernel at all.
> 
> If you go to the Options panel and turn on debugging (navigate to 
> Debugging, hit space, then q to quit) you'll get debug info in the 
> Alt-F2 window.  That might be helpful.  I'm not sure if the logging goes 
>  in a file that remains across reboot; that'd be useful for debugging 
> issues like this.
> 
>>
>>>> 2)  The 'kernels' distribution wasn't installed at all, which led 
>>>> loader to complain upon reboot.  I had an old kernel installed, so I 
>>>> booted from that and used sysinstall to install GENERIC.  I also had 
>>>> to change loader.conf to reference 'kernel="GENERIC"'.  Is this the 
>>>> preferred way to do it, or should I move 'GENERIC' to 'kernel'?
>>>
>>> It should be installed as kernel.  Again I don't know how you got
>>> something else :(
>>
>> Hm.  I will try to reinstall with 6.0-RELEASE and try to do the binary 
>> upgrade again, and see what happens.  Things will be different; this 
>> system was my first attempt to go to STABLE before I upgraded it so I 
>> can't rule out errors of my own in this case.
> 
> If you can record the steps by which you hit a problem it'd be 
> appreciated.  I'm not sure I tested the Upgrade mechanism so it may have 
> been broken by the mods I made to the kernel install logic.

OK, I've hit the /var/empty problem again, on a fresh install of 
6.0-RELEASE.  I enabled debugging but it doesn't say anything else 
useful on the F2 window.

Installing base, kernel (GENERIC), doc (custom set) from CD/DVD

Here's what it says on the F1 window (Transcribing):

Write failure on Transfer!  (wrote -1 bytes of 1424508 bytes)

On the F2 window:

...list of the fs hierarchy...
var/crash
var/cron
var/db
/stand/cpio: var/empty: chmod: Operation not permitted
/stand/gunzip: failed fwrite

I go back to F1 and accept.  When it asks me to retry, I go to F4 and 
chglags noschg /var/empty.  I go back to F1 and say "YES" to attempt to 
retrive again.  This time, it seems to go correctly.  I see that GENERIC 
  is trying to extract into /boot this time - don't remember whether it 
said that the first time around but I see it as a positive sign.

/boot/kernel exists this time (no special intervention from me), and 
contains the GENERIC kernel from 6.1-BETA4 CD.  No special intervention 
required to boot this time; system is now up and running on 6.1-BETA4.

Well, it looks like unless there's something going on with custom 
ident's in /boot/kernel, that may be a non-issue.  (The previous kernel 
was ident SERVER.)

The /var/empty thing looks to be real, though.  Should I file a PR?

Thanks,
Marty