upgrading 4.10 to 5.3

[Damien Hull]

I'm trying to upgrade my 4.10 workstation to 5.3 but I'm not having any
luck. In my search to find an answer I found some info saying that one
shouldn't upgrade branches. 

That brings me to my first question. Should I upgrade from 4.10 to 5.3
or should I just setup a new 5.3 workstation?

Here's where I am having trouble.

1. when trying to install the kernel I get this message telling me there
is no /boot/device.hints file. After doing some research I found that
there is a GENERIC.hints file in /usr/src/something/i386/conf/ (don't
remember the exact location). I placed that file in /boot/ and installed
the kernel. The kernel installs but I don't know if the GENERIC.hints
file will work when I reboot. All I can say is that the kernel
installed. That's when I moved on to mergemaster.

2. I had some trouble with mergemaster. Don't know what I did wrong here
so I can't say much about it. I don't think I've ever had much luck with
mergemaster. I'm going to give the upgrade another shot so maybe it will
work this next time.

3. Somehow I was able to finish the mergemaster step and move on to
installing my world. I did "make installworld" and a bunch of things
went by on the screen and then I got errors and "stop". I think it said
something about a core dump. All I got out of it was that my upgrade
didn't work.


I used g4u to backup my 4.10 workstation before I did the upgrade. I'm
doing my second restore as I write this. As soon as it finishes I'll
cvsup and start all over.

If anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong let me know. Also, if you
think I should just dump 4.10 and do a new install of 5.3 I can do that
as well. I've got another drive I can install 5.3 on.

I'm hoping I can upgrade so I don't have to configure a new 5.3 system. 
-- 
Damien Hull <dhull at digitaloverload.net>