Upgrade SRC built i386 8.4 to 10.1 questions

[Kimmo Paasiala]

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 4:22 PM, Pete French <petefrench at ingresso.co.uk> wrote:
>> 1. can I use freebsd-update to migrate to 10.1 i386
>
> not qualified to comment on this, to go from 8 to 10 I
> wuld recommend going via 9, as I am not sure it can be done in
> one step.
>
>> 2. can I use freebsd-update to migrate to 10.1 amd64
>> 3. can I use source buildkernel + buildworld to migrate i386 8.4 to amd64 10.1
>
> here you want to move from a 32 bit install to a 64 bit install. I have
> done this using the buildkernel + buoldworld process, but I had to
> use a second instagllation. Basically I upgraded to the latest version on
> the 32 bit platform, then installed a USB stick with the 64 bit platform, and
> upgraded that to exactly the same version. Then I booted from the
> USB stick and did an installworld & installkernel with the destination
> set to the hard discv with the 32 bit installation on it.
>
> That actually worked fine, it was on FreeBSD 8 I belive, I havent tried it
> recently, but it did shift the machine from 32 bit to 64 bit smoothly.
> Obviously you should not have any poirts installed whilst ding this, as they
> will need to be reinstalled for the new architecture.
>
> -pete.

I've done a similar operation:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/migrating-an-i386-installation-to-amd64-without-reinstall.50495/

Remember to run mergemaster(8) with the correct options for the target
platform (amd64) or you'll install some wrong configuration files.

HTH,

-Kimmo