Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release

[Peter Ulrich Kruppa]

On Sun, 6 Jun 2004, Roman Kennke wrote:

> Hi list,
>
> One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way
> to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), over network.
> I mean, I have a server running, to which I have no physical access. The
> only way to maintain it, is over SSH.
> The upgrade instructions in INSTALL.txt suggest putting in the CD, and
> using sysinstall for a binary upgrade. That is no option for me.
>
> What I am looking for is an upgrade method which
> - can be used over an SSH connection
> - is not too difficult (like manually placing each piece in the right
> place)
> - does not leave old stuff on the HD (like the sysinstall method does,
> AFAIK)
Generally this can be done (though it is not recommended) the way 
that is described in Chapter 21 of the handbook - you just don't 
drop into single user mode.
But you shouldn't track -CURRENT then, since -CURRENT 
developers tend to produce some horrible bugs every two or three 
months.
Do test this upgrade procedure on a local machine, so you know 
how things work.

>
> ... to make it short, something like the ports system (especially
> portupgrade) does with non-system apps would be cool.
>
> Is there a way to achieve that? This would be the one bit, which would
> make me switch to FreeBSD.
I am convinced you will.

Uli.

> /Roman
>
>

 	+---------------------------+
 	|    Peter Ulrich Kruppa    |
         |         Wuppertal         |
         |          Germany          |
         +---------------------------+