Upgrading from FreeBSD 4.1

Polytropon freebsd at edvax.de
Fri Apr 15 10:12:43 UTC 2016


On Fri, 15 Apr 2016 10:09:34 +0200, Allan Kapoma wrote:
> I'm running FreeBSD 4.10 and I want to upgrade the system to a later version
> of FreeBSD. 

This version has reached EOL (end of life) many years ago and is
not supported anymore.



> However, whenever I run commands to update the system (# freebsd-update), or
> install portsnap, or install portmanager, or pkg commands, portsnap fetch
> extract, I'm getting the message that command not found 

That is to be expected. The pkg command has been introduced in
FreeBSD 9, where the whole ports infrastructure has been changed
as well. The portsnap command also isn't part of FreeBSD 4.
So even if you have a working installation of ports tools, they
won't work with current ports.



> I'm asking for assistance on how I can enable the system (FreeBSD 4.10) to
> run these commands and hopefully update my system and packages on it

The easiest way I can think of is that you get a new disk and
install FreeBSD 10.3 on it, which is the current production
release. I would not suggest using FreeBSD 9 (legacy release)
except you have _very_ good and valid reasons to do so. Check
if you need the 32 bit or the 64 bit version.

After installing the OS, install the programs that you need,
either via pkg or using the ports collection. Then migrate your
configuration data, user accounts, databases, mailboxes or
whatever you want to keep from your FreeBSD 4 installation.
Do not modify that installation or overwrite it ("implicit
backup"), so you can always access it if you think you forgot
something. Then continue using the FreeBSD 10 installation
which is far easier to keep current than FreeBSD 4. The trouble
of an "in-place upgrade" simply isn't worth it (even though it
is possible, but still hard work).





-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


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