advice on compiling a new kernel & upgrading to the latest sources

[Bill Moran]

Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:

[copious snippage]

> > 2. Cd /usr/src/sys/amd64/conf which contains the file MYKERNEL
> 
> No it doesn't.  CVSup will delete the files it doesn't know about, so
> you should *SAVE a copy* of your favorite kernel config file outside of
> the source tree and *copy* it into `/usr/src/sys/amd64/conf' after CVSup
> finishes updates the sources.

Really?  What have I been doing wrong?  I've been keeping custom kernel
configs for years and cvsup has never deleted any of them.

> > 4.Copy everything under /etc to /root/etc
> 
> Why?  This isn't mentioned in `/usr/src/UPDATING' and it doesn't really
> help much if you manage to trash your /lib and /usr/lib trees.  A better
> suggestion is to ``make sure you have good level 0 dumps'', as suggested
> by ``/usr/src/UPDATING''.

While not mentioned in /usr/src/UPDATING, this is good practice in my
opinion.  mergemaster can be a tedious task, and making a local backup
of /etc has allowed me to undo some careless keystrokes a number of times.
I don't disagree with the dump advice, but an additional copy of /etc
around doesn't hurt anything and occasionally makes fixing a mistake
much faster an easier.

-Bill