5 to 6

[Robert Watson]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Randy Bush wrote:

> do folk actually successfully upgrade
>
> # uname -a
> FreeBSD psg.com 5.5-STABLE FreeBSD 5.5-STABLE #15: Sun Oct  1 18:41:24 GMT 2006     root at psg.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/PSG  i386
>
> to RELENG_6 *safely* on a many-user production system using the instructions 
> in UPDATING?

I've upgraded both 5.x to 6.x without serious problems, or even much work. 
The usual advice holds: a serial console is invaluable, especially when 
working remotely.  You're much more likely to run into application upgrade 
problems when you rebuild them all (or do binary updates), so you might 
consider updating all your applications first using portupgrade so that you 
can separate the issue of upgrading applications and OS.  You'll have to 
immediately rebuild the apps again after the OS upgrade, but it will be a 
rebuild of the same version of an app, rather than sliding version numbers.

Do make sure to boot a 6.x kernel with your 5.x userland and test things out a 
bit - make sure your hardware probes, is reliable, etc.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge