Upgrade FreeBSD 7.1 to 7.2

[N.J. Mann]

In message <y9lws488fu9.fsf at c052021.wlan.net.ed.ac.uk>,
	Michael Sperber (sperber at deinprogramm.de) wrote:
> 
> Robert Watson <rwatson at FreeBSD.org> writes:
> 
> > FWIW, the main problem I ran into with my 8.0 upgrade is that 8.0 uses
> > the uart(4) driver for serial ports, and sio(4), 7.2's default, has
> > been removed. They require mutually exclusive lines in device.hints
> > and different /etc/ttys lines.  If you rely on a serial console, I
> > would recommend first switching 7.2 to using uart, pausing for a bit,
> > and then switching forward to 8 so that you separate the risks
> > associated with changing console drivers from those associated with
> > sliding a major kernel version.
> 
> Could you briefly elaborate on how that's done with 7.x?  I.e. is
> changing device.hints and /etc/ttys enough (what changes?), or do I need
> to recompile the kernel?  (I'm a bit confused because both uart and sio
> seem to be in GENERIC, but I haven't been able to active uart through
> device.hints.  I couldn't find anything on freebsd.org or the internets,
> either.)  A few hints would be much appreciated!

Robert's comment prompted me to try this on my home server which runs
7-STABLE, but which I will probably upgrade to 8-STABLE in a few months
time.  What I did was:

 1. Replace 'device sio' with 'device uart' in the kernel configuration
    file.
 2. In /etc/ttys change all ttydX to ttyuX, where X was 0 to 3 in my
    case.
 3. In /boot/device.hints change all hint.sio.X.Y to hint.uart.X.Y

I then rebooted with my fingers crossed since said machine is headless.
I need not have worried since it worked first time.

If anyone thinks I forgot something please _do_ speak up.

HTH


Cheers,
       Nick.
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