Upgrade and change distro?

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Wed, 02 Jul 2008 17:13:11 -0500, Paul Schmehl <pschmehl_lists at tx.rr.com> wrote:
>On July 2, 2008 5:51:06 PM -0400 Sean Cavanaugh <millenia2000 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Paul Schmehl wrote:
>>> I have a dual core Intel server running 6.1 RELEASE i386.  I want to
>>> update it to 7.0 RELEASE.  Can I also switch to the AMD release at the
>>> same time?  (It's my understanding that all dual core processors should
>>> be  running AMD not i386.)
>>>
>>> If so, do I simply point to the GENERIC kernconf under AMD?  Any
>>> gotchas?
>>
>> AMD64 is for 64-bit chips from AMD and Intel. whether it is multi-core
>> is beside. run i386 still if you want/need 32-bit operating system.
>> there are some features and programs that will NOT work with AMD64.
>
> Thanks, Sean.  Maybe I'll understand FreeBSD some day.  :-)
>
> Will I need to rebuild all my ports after compiling the kernel and
> world?

Hi Paul,

If you change from 6.X to 7.0-RELEASE, then ``yes, that's a good idea''.

If you change from 32-bit 6.X to 64-bit 7.0-RELEASE, you will _have_ to
rebuild your ports as 64-bit applications.  Any subsequent port builds
will be built as 64-bit applications, so if you keep the 32-bit versions
around you will end up with a very odd mix of 32-bit and 64-bit parts.
That's bound to cause a lot of grief in the long run...

NOTE: If you rebuild FreeBSD 7.0 as a i386 (32-bit) system, it's
probably going to be a good idea to start from the packages in the
release CD-ROMs and then only rebuild the stuff that *really* *REALLY*
needs rebuilding.  A couple of very good reasons to rebuild a subset of
your ports are:

  * You need non-default options when building some ports.

  * Important security fixes in one of the installed ports.

A good indication of when to rebuild ports/packages to fix security
issues may be provided by the `ports-mgmt/portaudit' utility.  The
output of running `portaudit' looks like this:

: root at kobe:/root# portaudit -Fa
: auditfile.tbz                                 100% of   49 kB 9279  Bps
: New database installed.
: Affected package: fetchmail-6.3.8_6
: Type of problem: fetchmail -- potential crash in -v -v verbose mode (revised patch).
: Reference: <http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/portaudit/1e8e63c0-478a-11dd-a88d-000ea69a5213.html>
:
: 1 problem(s) in your installed packages found.
:
: You are advised to update or deinstall the affected package(s) immediately.
: root at kobe:/root#

This sort of output from `portaudit' means I can keep using my installed
ports, after rebuilding only the `mail/fetchmail' utility (and any ports
that depend on it).