Upgrading very old installation

[Balázs Mátéffy]

On 15 July 2011 22:46, Roland Smith <rsmith at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 08:20:52AM -0400, 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
>
> > I've been using the cvsup/make method of upgrades for years and only
> > used freebsd-upgrade once.  I'm not sure if either method can handle a
> > 6.x to 8.x upgrade.
>
> They are tested for upgrading to the next major version. Who knows if it
> will
> work across two major versions? Personally I wouldn't want to be the one ot
> try it out. :-)
>
> > I also have a bunch of ports in this server (e.g. apache, postfix,
> > etc.)  Once the OS is updated, should I just portupgrade them all?
>
> Doesn't work reliably across major version updates. When updating to a
> newer
> major version, the best way is to delete all ports (save their config files
> of course), scrub the /usr/local tree clean and then re-install them.
>
> Matthews advice of re-installing 8.2 on a second harddrive is probably the
> easiest and safest way to go.
>
> Roland
> --
> R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
> [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
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>

Hi,

I would try to update the split mirror of the 6.4 to 8.2, I did manage to
update couple of years back from Releng6 to Current 8 :).

Did the usual make kernel / world stuff mergemaster prebuild in the middle
and mergemaster after the update then I rebuilt all the ports.

I recently did a 6.4-STABLE > 8.2-RELEASE-p2 migration to another server,
but without using only some initial old config files  from the old system
because I had to build a better environment with other software for the same
role (almost the same thing that Matt recommended you). For me this is a
longer procedure then updating all the software and checking for maybe now
deprecated options and other problems.

So I think its down to your level of knowledge and personal preference (
whether you want to check what is to problem in case something goes wrong- I
like this because I get to know the system and the inner workings in more
detail). I personally don't like freebsd-update, and if your are new to the
build from source way, you should really go with building up from scratch,
then migrate.

In case you want to update have a WORKING backup, and do a test run for the
update (restore your 6.4 on a test machine and try to update it) before you
bring down the productive system.

Good luck!

Regards,

Balazs.