On Monday 24 April 2006 11:00, Paul Schmehl wrote: > --On April 24, 2006 11:02:18 AM -0500 Jonathan Horne > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > i have begun spending a good deal of time researching and > > practicing the buildworld process on my dev boxes. i want to make > > sure i have the entire process down pat, before i attempt it on my > > production server. > > > > the handbook states that i should: > > > > make buildworld > > make buildkernel > > make installkernel > > > > and then reboot to single usermode. the installworld comes while > > in single user mode, and my production server would see quite a bit > > of downtime over this. handbook says to, in sigle user mode: > > > > mergemaster -p > > make installworld > > mergemaster > > reboot > > > > ive seen several articles on the net, and of course, no one agrees > > on the exact steps to take to update your system. my question is, > > is it safe to 'mergemaster' and 'make installworld' while still up > > and running? or do i just need to bite the downtime-bullet, and > > put it in single user? > > I have done the complete process remotely, over ssh, without > problems. *However*, that is not the recommended procedure *and* I > was doing it on a new install where, if it failed, I could simply > start over. I wouldn't recommend it for production systems that are > remotely located. The price you pay for going to the server and > using single-user mode is less than the price you pay for doing it > remotely *and* having it fail. >
It wasn't too far into the upgrade process from 6.0 to 6.1 that my boot1 got out of step and would cause a freeze during the boot. I could revert kernel.old back to kernel and then, I could figure out what was wrong. It was a multi-boot system and the version of boot1 on my c-drive was really old. Once I copied the new boot1 onto my c-drive, I didn't have any problems. It could have easily been something else that caused a panic at boot. The boot to single user mode is to reduce the frequency of that occuring; however, I find each system has quirks and if you take the chance, you may find a surprise waiting for you. The current gigabit if_re can panic at boot. If you reboot, it frequently will boot successfully. If not, you have to power down and then boot. It has always booted after the power down. There is a pr on the problem but nothing has been done about it. As you said, the price for doing it right, is often much less than scrambling to fix something that totally fails. A long time ago, I found that designing around the failures cost less in the long run than taking shortcuts that only saved time until something happened and your system was down for hours. Kent -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA http://www.soyandina.com/ "I am Andean project". http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
