Is it possible to update from CURRENT to RELEASE ?

[Polytropon]

On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 14:11:56 +0000, Manish Jain wrote:
> On 04/18/17 15:40, Polytropon wrote:
> > That is something you'd probably do from source. That kind of
> > downgrade should be possible that way.
> [...]
> In the above context, there are 2 things I have not been able to figure 
> out :
> 
> 1) If I forgot to choose the src distribution at installation time, can 
> I install the src.txz tarball by hand myself later from the installation 
> media ?

Yes. You will get for example 10.3-RELEASE sources. It's also
possible to download and extract that archive from the FTP site.

Additionally, it's also possible to use svn to check out the
release source, but it's probably much easier to just use the
src archive.

The FreeBSD Handbook has more detailed information:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/svn.html

Note that svn is much more convenient to repeatedly track "minimal
deltas" of a source tree than to obtain a whole tree "as is". :-)



> 2) Is it possible to create a pristine FreeBSD environment by hand on a 
> new (MBR+UFS) slice using the tarballs on the installation media ? If 
> this is possible, can you be kind enough to list the strategy 
> outline/steps ?

It's basically what the installer does: It extracts the different
archives into the intended directories; "tar xvf <name>" should
be sufficient.

So the manual approach for MBR + UFS would be:

1. initialize disk with gpart
2. create file systems with newfs
3. extract archives with tar
4. make desired changes to configuration files
5. (re)boot system



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...