Ancient FreeBSD update path

[krad]

Back everything up. Forget about upgrading you are making your life harder.
Do a ZFS install with BE's then port your apps. It will be quicker less
prone to errors and you will end up with a better system in the end. If the
system is a bit of a rats nest, then this would be the ideal time to
document all its quirks, and tidy up. If it really is that hairy consider
running the old applications in jails ontop of a new pristine OS build.

If its on hardware consider new kit as well if its an important service, or
consolidate it into a jail on something else.

On 20 January 2018 at 01:16, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 19 Jan 2018 13:28:41 +0100 Andrea Brancatelli <
> abrancatelli at schema31.it> wrote:
> Andrea Brancatelli writes:
> > Hello guys.
> >
> > I have a couple of ancient FreeBSD install that I have to bring into
> > this century (read either 10.4 or 11.1) :-)
> >
> > I'm talking about a FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-p4 and a couple of FreeBSD
> > 9.3-RELEASE-p53.
> >
> > What upgrade strategy would you suggest?
> >
> > Direct jump into the future (8 -> 11)? Progressive steps (8 -> 9 -> 10
> > -> 11)? Boiling water on the HDs? :-)
> >
> > Thanks, any suggestion in more than welcome.
>
> Incremental update will take a long time and if something gets
> messed up in the middle, you will be much worse off. You may
> also not find relevant packages any more for an EOLed release.
> And you may have to solve problems that no longer exist on
> newer packages.
>
> What I would do is to make a backup of everything, make a list
> of installed packages and config files, and do a fresh install
> of the latest release. Then get the critical packages working.
> Then add others as needed.
>
> If possible do this on a separate machine so that you can
> check config/program behavior on the original machine.  When
> you are satisfied, either switch to the other machine or copy
> things back to the original. When one of my computers was
> starting to fall apart, I did this with an inexpensive used
> thinkpad.
>
> One more thing to consider: your ancient machine hardware may
> need to be maintenance/repais/replacement.  A fully
> operational second (temporary) machine gives you a chance to
> try to do maintenace such as remove dust and cat hair
> carefully, check fans and replace them if needed, replace
> disks if older than 4 years, etc.
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