binary upgrade of a remote box

[Victor Sudakov]

Doug Hardie wrote:
> 
> > 
> > I have some remote boxes running outdated versions of FreeBSD like
> > 8.2-RELEASE-p6 or even 7.4-RELEASE-p5
> > 
> > What's the least painful way of updating those systems to something
> > like RELENG_9_2 ? 
> > 
> > I am comfortable with the "make world" method and have done this
> > remotely before, but those boxes are too weak to compile their own
> > world, and the disks are too small. Mounting /usr/{src,obj} from a
> > remote host is not an option because of relatively slow and unreliable
> > WAN links.
> > 
> > I am very uncomfortable with "freebsd-update upgrade", at least it's
> > not something I would risk remotely.
> > 
> > Any more ideas of a way to perform a smooth binary upgrade?
> 
> Here is the approach I use:
> 
> I keep one system that is purely for development/test.  Its large
> enough to hold and build the entire system.  Note, these machines
> are all remote.  I use freebsd-update to keep it up to date.  I then
> rebuild kernels and userland on it since I need to have non-defaults
> in the kernel and changes to sendmail to support STARTTLS.  That
> machine is also configured as a NFS server.
> 
> On the actual production machines, I mount /usr/src, /usr/obj, and
> /usr/ports via NFS and then to an install kernel and installworld.
> Once that is done, I use mergemaster and then reboot the machine.

Doug,

That's an excellent method, but as I have already written above,
mounting /usr/{src,obj} from a remote host is not an option because of
relatively slow and unreliable WAN links.


-- 
Victor Sudakov,  VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
sip:sudakov at sibptus.tomsk.ru