upgrade from 4.2 to 6.2

[William A. Mahaffey III]

On 02/26/16 11:24, Polytropon wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Feb 2016 21:40:24 +0530, sathiyaraj v wrote:
>> I am doing it for the first time.
> This is why a verified backup is mandatory. :-)
>
>
>
>> That's why I am looking for some tutor. I
>> just tried to add new files  in the existing 4.2. But I ran into
>> compilation issues. To fix that I am searching file by file. That consumes
>> lot of my time.
> Manually messing with the source is not a good idea, especially
> when you want to improve system security.
>
>
>
>> That's where I thought of direct upgrade from 4.2 to 6.2.
> The easiest way to do this is to actually re-install the whole OS
> (and then the applications you need). Doing this via source is
> possible, but often more complicated than it needs to be. You
> will have to manually download the source distributions, as FreeBSD
> 4 and 6 still use CVS for source checkout (which isn't supported
> anymore and therefore won't work). Installing the currently required
> tool for source checkout, which is SVN, isn't really possible because
> FreeBSD 4 and 6 are lacking the ports toolchain which is required,
> and binary packages probably won't exist for that old version (in
> the archive I mentioned in a previous message).
>
>
>
>> My understanding is that to upgrade from 4.2 to 6.2 ,we need to take backup
>> and install new SRC directly.
> No, you install the OS in the "normal" (binary) manner. To install
> from source, you need a system that's able to process the sources,
> which in your case would mean you'd first have to get the sources
> of 5.0, compile and install, upgrade to lastest 5.x version, compile
> and install, get sources of 6.0, compile and install, upgrade sources
> to 6.2, compile and install - which is much more work than actually
> using the precompiled 6.2 installation image and install "from scratch",
> and after that, restore configuration and user data from backup.
>
>
>
>> Is that a way or any other easiest way to
>> achieve that?
> As I said, it's possible, but much more work that it needs to be.
> There's nothing wrong with installing "from scratch". From the
> installation media, you can also install precompiled packages of
> software you need. And everything else can be installed from the
> ftp-archive location with $PACKAGESITE set for pkg_add.
>
> Is there any reason for you not to install a _current_ FreeBSD
> version, such as FreeBSD 10.2 for PPC? It will be much easier
> for you to get the additional software you need: You can install
> it binarily (via "pkg add") or from source with the ports collection
> (which now has totally different "inner workings"). And you're
> using an OS that is supported.
>


I'll jump in & 2nd the motion on a straight *backup/verify-reinstall* 
upgrade pathway. Once you decide to do that, it is no more difficult to 
go from 4.2 --> 10.2 than it would be to go from 4.2 --> 6.2, except 
that 6.2 is also past EOL & unsupported in the same way 4.2 is, so you 
wouldn't be buying yourself any real advantage going to 6.2.


-- 

	William A. Mahaffey III

  ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	"The M1 Garand is without doubt the finest implement of war
	 ever devised by man."
                            -- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.