preparing for an upgrade

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 03:07:32PM +1100, andrew clarke wrote:
> On Tue 2008-11-18 16:47:20 UTC-0700, Kelly Martin (kellymartin at gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> > With the release of FreeBSD 6.4 imminent, I'd like to prepare for an
> > upgrade from FreeBSD 6.2 -> 6.4.
> 
> Have you considered using freebsd-update?  From memory, it supports 6.2.
> 
> > Please excuse my ignorance but in my mind here's what I plan to do
> > when it's available:
> > 
> > 1. install / run the upgrade script using CD-ROM media to a 6.4
> > GENERIC kernel, reboot
> > 2. customize the kernel to my hardware (like I did in 6.2), reboot
> > 3. portsnap fetch update (to get the latest ports tree for 6.4)
> > 4. portupgrade -ai (to upgrade any outdated ports)
> 
> I don't think there will be any need to rebuild your ports after
> upgrading from 6.2 to 6.4.  (The situation is different if you were
> going from 6.2 to 7.1 though.)

Threading library changes are a good reason to rebuild your ports in
this case.

> > I'm a little confused about different versions of the ports tree. What
> > I mean is, I keep updating my FreeBSD 6.2 ports tree and have never
> > had any problems... it just works. I'm assuming the 6.4 ports tree is
> > a little different and specific to 6.4?
> 
> No, there is only one ports tree shared between all FreeBSD versions.
> If you already have an updated ports tree with a 6.2 installation, you
> can keep using that with 6.4 (or even 7.x).

You can only use it on 7.x if you add compatibility libraries and ensure
your kernel has COMPAT_FREEBSD6 in it.  These libraries have given some
users trouble in the past; you will find most people advocate rebuilding
all ports from scratch (pkg_delete -af please) when upgrading between
major FreeBSD versions (e.g. 6.x -> 7.x).

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |