Exploring the updateability of FreeBSD 8.2 -> 12.1

[matthew at FreeBSD.org]

On 09/09/2020 14:02, Rene Ladan wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 09, 2020 at 09:40:38AM +0200, rainer at ultra-secure.de wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I may be in a position to have to upgrade a FreeBSD 8.2 host to a
>> supported version (so I can install the latest packages).
>>
>> Obviously, this is still with the old pkg_* tools.
>>
>> Do I do the conversion at the end (when I'm on 12.1) or at the beginning
>> (when I'm on 9.3)?
> 
> I think it is best to do it as early as possible. ports-mgmt/pkg used to
> have a script pkg2ng to do this conversion for you but it no longer does.
> 
>>
>> I have my own pourdriere package builder and thanks to some hoarding, I
>> think I still have pretty much all the packages even of 9.something,
>> somewhere.
>>
> Mmm, perhaps it is a good idea to delete the old-generation packages and
> replace them with these cached packages first and then upgrade the OS
> and packages?

For such a large jump in versions, it would probably be a good idea to 
obtain a new hard drive and do a complete fresh install of FreeBSD from 
scratch, install all the necessary packages, copy over data and add any 
local configuration to replicate the functionality of the old system. 
This has several advantages:

   * You will still have the original 8.2 system available to revert back
     to in case of problems
   * You can adapt the disk partitioning to suit what current FreeBSD
     needs, or you change low level things like switching from UFS to ZFS
     if desired.
   * It takes the pressure off -- you can in principle work on installing
     the new system off-line, apply whatever acceptance tests you need
     and then only have as much downtime as it takes to swap in the new
     drive.

	Cheers,

	Matthew