Upgrading very old installation

[Steven Friedrich]

On 7/15/2011 9:38 AM, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> On 15/07/2011 13:20, Jaime Kikpole wrote:
>> I'm running a FreeBSD 6.x server that hasn't been updated in about 1.5 years.
>>
>> atlas:~>uname -mprs
>> FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE-p8 i386 i386
>>
>> What is the recommended way to upgrade it to something current?
>> Should I upgrade it to the most recent 6.x and then to 7.x and then to
>> 8.x?  Or should I use a more direct route, upgrading it straight to
>> the 8-RELEASE branch?
> You'll almost certainly find it quicker and less painful to just
> reinstall using an up to date version of FreeBSD.  Personally, I'd go
> and buy a new hard drive for the machine, install the latest OS and
> applications on that and then copy over data etc.  It helps if you can
> have both drives mounted in the same machine at once.
>
> There are variations on this theme -- for instance if your server has
> mirrored HDDs then you can split the mirror, re-install on one half,
> reconcile configurations, data, user accounts between the two halves
> and ultimately resynch the old drive to the new one.
>
> The big advantage of this sort of approach is that you get your new
> install up and running and tested before you need to commit to the
> potentially irreversible step of overwriting your last copy of the old one.
>
> 	Cheers,
>
> 	Matthew
>
Excellent advice, Matt.  You rock.