Novice needs advice building new kernel: UPG 4.7-RELEASE ---> 4.9-RELEASE

[Eric F Crist]

On Sunday 23 November 2003 01:52 pm, Jeff Bogari wrote:
> Thanks in advance for the expert assistance:
>
> I'm *halfway* knowledgeable with my 4.7-RELEASE system.  Built it on a
> 486/66 (16MB RAM) about a year ago.  It's time to upgrade to 4.9-RELEASE.
> Here's what I've got so far:
>
> 1.  Set the options in sysinstall to retrieve 4.9-RELEASE instead of
>     4.7-RELEASE
> 2.  Used sysinstall to download the 4.9-RELEASE data via FTP
> 3.  Tried to rebuild the kernel with the "first" process as documented
> 4.  All steps proceed without error
> 5.  Kernel size after last step is 0KB, so reboot fails.  Fallback to
>     kernel.old
> 6.  GENERIC kernel installed with 4.9-RELEASE is kinda iffy - had to
> address several issues with 4.7 GENERIC to arrive at the kernel conf I am
> happy with under 4.7
> 7.  Ran through kernel conf again to confirm no new gotchas and all
> required deviations for my setup were followed.  Nothing looks fishy.
>
> Then:
> 1.  Tried "second" procedure as documented
> 2.  Failure at some point I don't recall due to physical memory or swap
> size
>
> How/why is this kernel ending up 0-sized with no error message?
>
> I played with the kernel protection as documented in the troubleshooting
> sections.  Everything seems normal.  Must I set kern_security level < 0
> before
> I begin?
>
> Or should I lean on the "second" process to make it work?  The problem
> there being that I do not have a kernel that allows me to increase swap by
> creating a swap file   >:(
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Jeff
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
> "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"

Here's what works for me:

I use cvsup to download the new sources and build from there.  Download and 
install this by doing the following:
#cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup
#make install

when done, create an text document called cvs-supfile in the /root directory:
#cd /root
#ee cvs-supfile
---document contents follow:---
*default host=cvsup3.freeBSD.org
*default base=/usr
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_4
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default compress
src-all
#ports-all
doc-all
---document contents above---

Now, you want to use that file to get the correct sources.

#cvsup -g -L2 /root/cvs-supfile

When this file is complete, change to the /usr/src directory and build all 
your source files.

#cd /usr/src
#make clean; make world

This process on a 486 could take an hour or more.  Just be aware of this.  
Once this is done, you need to recompile your kernel.  Change to the kernel 
configuration directory.

#cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf

You may have edited this document or not, if not, just configure your GENERIC 
kernel, otherwise change GENERIC in this example for the correct file:

#config GENERIC

You will get a message about your build directory is ../../compile/GENERIC or 
what ever you substituted for GENERIC, and a message about not forgetting to 
make depend:

#cd ../../compile/GENERIC
#make; make depend; make install

After this is done, reboot and you should be good to go!

HTH
-- 
Eric F Crist
President
AdTech Integrated Systems, Inc