Upgrading to 6.1 (cvsup)

[John Nielsen]

On Tuesday 09 May 2006 13:06, John Cruz wrote:
> So I want to upgrade to 6.1, but I've never used cvsup before and all
> the documentation is confusing as can be. Would it be easier to download
> the install mediums and do an upgrade install or is cvsup the better
> way? if so how do I go about it? the hanbook page on this is somewhat
> confusing, which is why i'm resorting to posts.

cvsup is definitely the preferred way to upgrade, and is very easy to use, 
especially once you get it set up the first time.

You need to:

1) Make sure you have cvsup installed
	pkg_add -r cvsup-without-gui
OR
	cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui && make install clean
(the latter assumes you have a ports tree on your system)

2) Create a supfile appropriate for your situation (and location).  Here is 
mine:

*default host=cvsup12.freebsd.org
*default base=/var/db
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_6
*default delete use-rel-suffix
*default compress
src-all

Change the host to a mirror close to you, and change the base to wherever you 
want the cvsup metadata files stored.  Also change the tag to RELENG_6_1 if 
you want the 6.1 branch instead of 6-STABLE.  For more details, see the 
examples in /usr/share/examples/cvsup and the handbook:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvsup.html

All that the above really says is to put the "RELENG_6" branch of 
the "src-all" collection into /usr (and actually into /usr/src).

3) Run it
	cvsup /path/to/your/supfile

That's it!  In the future, you just have to repeat step 3 to get the latest 
sources from your selected CVS branch.  If you want to move to a different 
branch in the future (6-STABLE or 6.2 when that happens), it's just a matter 
of changing the tag in your supfile.

Once you have the sources, you have to build and reinstall your kernel and 
world to actually update your system, but that's covered pretty well in the 
handbook and elsewhere.

JN