Upgrading from FreeBSD 4.1

Matthew Seaman matthew at FreeBSD.org
Fri Apr 15 10:15:53 UTC 2016


On 04/15/16 09:09, Allan Kapoma wrote:

> I'm running FreeBSD 4.10 and I want to upgrade the system to a later version
> of FreeBSD. 
> 
>  
> 
> 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 
> 
>  
> 
> The my output for uname -a is shown below
> 
>  
> 
> relay# uname -a
> 
> FreeBSD relay.zamnet.zm 4.10-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE #1: Fri Nov 12
> 06:54:4   
> 
>  
> 
> 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

Given that FreeBSD 4.10 is so old -- 4.10-RELEASE was around 9 years ago
-- then I'd be concerned about the hardware it's running on.  Not just
because of Moore's Law, but simply because components that old are
probably past the end of their expected lifetimes.  Certainly for hard
drives -- the churn involved in upgrading the system can quite easily
trigger drive failure.

If I were you, I'd start with a fresh install of FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE on
at least a new hard drive, but preferably an entirely new server.  Then
port over all your local settings and software load.  This also has the
very useful property that your old system can be left running while you
do the build, and still be available afterwards if you need to revert
back to it.

If you can't afford new components or new hardware, whatever you do,
don't try and do an in-place upgrade: the partitioning layout needed has
changed quite a lot in the past decade, and you'll find that modern
FreeBSD needs much more space in the root partition than 4.10 did.
You'll end up with a full filesystem and missing important files.  In
this situation, you would be better off wiping the system and doing a
reinstall from scratch.

	Cheers,

	Matthew





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