Help! Upgrade from fbsd 5.4 to 8.x

[Ruben de Groot]

On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 09:33:51AM +0100, Roland Smith typed:
> On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 11:08:05PM -0500, Jeff Mitchell wrote:
> 
> >  	o Some of the executables on this box are without source but I 
> > still need them to run; short of moving them to a VM and doing some 
> > voodoo, what are the chances a binary built for fbsd 5.x works fine in 
> > 8.x? (earlier fbsd's had the break between gcc versions, but I'm rather 
> 
> The GENERIC kernel in 8.0 comes with the COMPAT_FREEBSD5 option by default, so
> the only thing you need to do is to install the misc/compat5x port.

That is, if the executables weren't dependent on compat[2-4] options in the kernel on the old server ;)

> >  	3 - yank the drive, slap a giant new fat drive in there, do a full 
> > fbsd 8.0 install, and then migration from old drive as needed
> 
> Definitely #3.

Yes, you could even try coying the entire old disk to a subdirectory and
running that as a jail. Should bring you up quickly, giving you more time
to migrate all applications proper.

Ruben