Upgrading a FreeBSD 7.1 server

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 554, Issue 5, Message: 17
On Thu, 15 Jan 2015 20:46:11 +0100 Damien Fleuriot <ml at my.gd> wrote:

 > Regarding your question about pkg, you'll need to run pkg2ng to convert
 > your current ports database to the new pkg tools, after your upgrade to the
 > 8.x branch.
 >
 > I seem to recall having problems with a few ports that wouldn't go along
 > quietly, but all in all you should be a-OK.

That could turn into a _lot_ of work.  Personally for 8.4 I'd just save 
a list of ports from pkg_info, install the OS, install pkg(7) on it, 
update pkg(8), install portmaster and follow the Handbook to install all 
your ports/packages and keep them updated (as desired).

But then, I'd sooner recommend going to 9.3-RELEASE instead.  Support 
for 8.4 expires in June this year and I've heard no mention of an 8.5

9.3 is an extended release, supported until the end of 2016.  I've found 
the whole 9.x series to be very solid indeed (albeit mostly on laptops).

Again just personally, I'm happy leaving 10.1 a while longer to settle, 
but I'm a conservative updater too ..

 > I reiterate my recommendation to perform a source upgrade as per the
 > handbook [1].

Agreed.

 > You should, of course, practice on a test box to begin with (install
 > 8.4-RELEASE, svnup [2][3] your sources to -STABLE, and upgrade).

Agreed.  Or better 9.3-RELEASE.  Others will recommend 10.1

 > Warren Block wrote a series of articles that may get you started [4].

Seconded.  The Handbook's been improving in leaps and bounds lately too.

 > Do not bother compiling the whole subversion suite, svnup does the job.

Absolutely.  I'm amazed svnup(1) hasn't had more exposure.  Developers 
need svn of course, but for occasional or periodic source upgrades (svn, 
http or https protocols) it works fine if somewhat slower than svn, is 
seriously lightweight for smaller systems, not least because it saves 
needing double diskspace for /usr/src and, if you use svn not portsnap 
for ports, /usr/ports.

smithi at x200:~/de118i-2 % ll `which svnup`
-r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  45736 Jun 25  2014 /usr/local/bin/svnup
smithi at x200:~/de118i-2 % ll -rt /var/tmp/svnup
total 11136
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  3736967 Apr 22  2014 stable.apr
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  3738448 Jun 25  2014 stable
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  3738347 Jul  6  2014 release

That's it; I haven't even bothered cleaning up the old file hashlists.

smithi at x200:~/de118i-2 % pkg info svnup
svnup-1.05

Woops, mine's two versions out of date, since 9.2-R, though I've used it 
to update to 9.3 sources since.

 > [1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/updating-upgrading.html
 > [2] http://jcm.dsl.visi.com/freebsd/svnup/
 > [3] https://wiki.freebsd.org/CvsIsDeprecated
 > [4] http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/buildworld.html

 > On 15 January 2015 at 18:54, Robert Fitzpatrick <robert at webtent.org> wrote:

[.. top post tail trimmed to new content ..]

 > > Mostly because of vulnerabilities like Poodle and having an issue with the
 > > ports system getting some of the latest packages. I was having an issue
 > > with the ports system on another machine with a later version and upgraded
 > > it fine. Should I be able to work out the conversion of the ports system in
 > > 7.1 to pkg?
 > >
 > > --
 > > Robert

cheers, Ian