Source level upgrade from 4.9 to CURRENT..

[Julian H. Stacey]

Hi,
Reference:
> From:		Rom Albuquerque <a_romolo at hotmail.com> 
> Date:		Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:38:16 +0000 
> Message-id:	<SNT114-W81D034E5EFD1695113D57EDE30 at phx.gbl> 

Rom Albuquerque wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>  Hi folks. Need help in doing the following, but first want to check 
> and see if it is feasible with the latest Release, or if I'm just going to 
> be spinning my wheels on this one. 
> 
> The Objective.
> ==============
> 
>  I have a FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE system which I want to upgrade to 7.X 
> from the source level. Had a bunch of problems installing 7.1-RELEASE from 
> the CD distribution I got from freebsdmall.com. Several problems that 
> could not mount the CD at the time of installation causing sysinstall
> to halt. So, 4.9 is installed and working, is there a source level
> backward compatibility issue between 7.x and anything older than 6.0 ?
> In other words, upgrading from the sources with such an old
> distribution is a doable task ?  
> 
> 
> Your response is greatly appreciated. 
> 
> Many thanks. 
> 
>  
> 
> --Rom
> a_romolo at hotmail (dot) com

I recently upgraded lots of hosts from 4.10 & 4.11 & 5 & 6 to 7.2,
So many to keep track I needed my 
	http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/txt/upgrade.html

I `just' moved in the binaries from CD alongside, flipped the directory
contents, rebooted, then built new custom kernels & make world & rebuilt
ports.
But I didnt do some cross compile from 4 to 7, too much like hard work that!

So quite possible to upgrade without repartitioning disc
& reloading data.  But you might want a bigger root. You might want
a newer FFS for performance (can't remember when that came in).
... there'll doubtless be a few other `Gotchas' so if you have problems/
not enough experience/ get stuck. the safe way is a back up, & reinstall.
Well, a back up's not exactly a foolish precaution anyway ;-)

Good luck.

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey: BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultants Munich http://berklix.com
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