Upgrade to 4.8 RELEASE

[Robert H. Perry]

Hello,

I'm making plans to upgrade from 4.7 RELEASE to 4.8 RELEASE.  My 
previous attempt was a binary upgrade from 4.5 to 4.7 which did not go 
very well.  I eventually purchased the 4.7 CD.  

The FreeBSD Handbook stresses  backing up the system and implies that 
/dump/ is a better backup program.  Chapter 12.9.8.1 of  the handbook 
recommends having a copy of the boot and fixit floppies available and 
making sure they have all your devices, otherwise you'll need to prepare 
two bootable custom floppies  that contain /fdisk, disklabel, newfs, 
mount, /and your backup program.   It goes on to say that these programs 
must be statically linked.  I understand hard and soft links but I'm not 
familiar with static links.  The handbook also provides a script for 
creatinng a bootable floppy.

Can someone help me understand static link?  Secondly, can I assume that 
the script must be reviewed for likely modifications?  I'm just learning 
shell programming and if significant modifications are necessary, I may 
end up purchasing a CD for 4.8.

Any suggestions relative to the upgrade process is also appreciated.

Thanks,
Bob