Upgrade to 4.8 RELEASE

[Sergey 'DoubleF' Zaharchenko]

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

A static link is a firm link:) Seriously, static linking has nothing to
do with filesystem links. A statically linked program just uses no
shared libraries. AFAICT the programs in /stand (and /bin and /sbin) are
statically linked (note that those in /stand are also a "crunchbox",
that is, a single "monolithic" program which runs differently depending
on the name it was run as). You really have to mess with this only if
you are going to write your own program to run from a boot floppy.

You can use file(1) if you want to see if a program is staticlally linked:

$ file /usr/bin/find 
/usr/bin/find: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (FreeBSD), for FreeBSD 4.8, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
$ file /stand/find 
/stand/find: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (FreeBSD), for FreeBSD 4.8, statically linked, stripped


> 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.

In fact, a source update isn't as dangerous as you expect.

> Thanks,
> Bob 
> 
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-- 
DoubleF
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President.  Now
I'm beginning to believe it.
		-- Clarence Darrow


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