Upgrade to 4.8 RELEASE

[Jud]

On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 20:04:39 -0400, Robert H. Perry 
<rperry4 at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm making plans to upgrade from 4.7 RELEASE to 4.8 RELEASE.  My 
> previous attempt was a binary upgrade from 4.5 to 4.7 which did not go 
> very well.  I eventually purchased the 4.7 CD.  The FreeBSD Handbook 
> stresses  backing up the system and implies that /dump/ is a better 
> backup program.  Chapter 12.9.8.1 of  the handbook recommends having a 
> copy of the boot and fixit floppies available and making sure they have 
> all your devices, otherwise you'll need to prepare two bootable custom 
> floppies  that contain /fdisk, disklabel, newfs, mount, /and your backup 
> program.   It goes on to say that these programs must be statically 
> linked.  I understand hard and soft links but I'm not familiar with 
> static links.  The handbook also provides a script for creatinng a 
> bootable floppy.
>
> Can someone help me understand static link?  Secondly, can I assume that 
> the script must be reviewed for likely modifications?  I'm just learning 
> shell programming and if significant modifications are necessary, I may 
> end up purchasing a CD for 4.8.
>
> Any suggestions relative to the upgrade process is also appreciated.

Unless there is a specific reason not to do so, cvsup and make world would 
seem to be an easier and altogether better way to go for an upgrade from 
one minor version number to the next.  Many users do this quite routinely 
(e.g., I do it once every week or two).  See <URL: 
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cutting-edge.html#CUTTING-EDGE-SYNOPSIS>.  
While this section of the Handbook talks about the "cutting edge" 
development branches, -CURRENT and -STABLE, the same process can be used 
to upgrade to a -RELEASE.

Jud