freebsd "toaster"

[Alex Stangl]

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 07:04:47PM -0700, SA wrote:
> This article by Colin Percival http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-update/binup.html discusses using freebsd-update as a "toaster" for updating an entire FreeBSD based distribution, instead of just the base system like freebsd-update normally does. Does anyone know where there might be more information on this topic?

Not long ago I tried using freebsd-update to update from 6.0-RELEASE to 7.2-RELEASE,
based upon instructions on Percival's blog,
http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2007-11-11-freebsd-major-version-upgrade.html

It blew away the contents of /boot/kernel. Multiple emails to Percival
went unanswered, and when I later asked about it on this list, the only
response was a suggestion to upgrade via source. (Thanks for the
suggestion, by the way -- I think I'll rather do that to stay up to date
once I get caught up.)

Based upon my experience and the apparent lack of current support, I
would not recommend using these tools for binary updates, especially in
an automated fashion. If I get some spare time and inclination, I may
try to diagnose what went wrong with the freebsd-update script, but more
likely will end up doing a clean install of 7.2-RELEASE from ISO onto
a new drive, and migrate everything over.

Alex