Installing FreeBSD-6.2 & Xorg-7.2

[John Nielsen]

On Tuesday 12 June 2007 08:55:54 am Gerard wrote:
> I have had nothing but grief since updating to the new Xorg-7.2
> version on my PC. Unexplained crashes, lockups, etc. No doubt, some of
> the problems are my fault; however I cannot seem to get them corrected.
>
> Now, I was wondering how this would work.
>
> 1) Download a fresh ISO of FreeBSD-6.2 on to another PC
> 2) Erase my HDs on the PC presently running FBSD
> 3) Reformat the HDs
> 4) Install the fresh copy of FBSD
>
> Will that give me a system that I can directly install Xorg-7.2 on to
> or do I still have to go through the procedure shown in the "UPDATING"
> file? Suppose I install Xorg-7.2 doing the actual install of FBSD;
> will that make any difference? In any case, I would build a new kernel
> ASAP after the new install.

That should work fine, as long as you remember to run mergebase.sh on the new 
system. It's counterintuitive and won't have much work to do, but it will do 
useful things like create the /usr/X11R6 -> /usr/local symlink and change 
some defaults in /etc so (e.g.) rc.d and periodic scripts won't run twice.

If it's just your ports you're trying to refresh and don't have any worries 
about your base system, you could also try something like this:

0) Back up your entire system. Also make a note of what packages you have 
installed (pkg_info > /root/pkg-list.txt, for example).

1) Delete ALL ports from your system. I find it's most efficient to do 
something like this:
	a) make backups, esp of files in /usr/local/etc
	b) # pkg_info | awk -F ' ' '{print $1}' | xargs pkg_delete -f
	c) review remaining files under /usr/X11R6 and /usr/local, if any
	d) # rm -r /usr/X11R6/* /usr/local/*

2) Update your base system. csup, buildworld, etc.

3) Update your ports tree. portsnap, etc.

4) Run mergebase.sh
	# sh /usr/ports/Tools/scripts/mergebase.sh

5) Reinstall everything you want installed.

Have fun,

JN