On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 05:09:57PM -0400, Jerry McAllister wrote: > On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 04:47:06PM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > First off, I want to thank the people who responded to my thread > > "Stability Issues on a 5.4-RELEASE box" a couple of weeks ago; after > > disabling hyperthreading, getting a clean run of Memtest back, and > > doing some serious fsck'ing of the disks, the box appears to now be > > completely stable. I'm still not sure which of the above fixed the > > problem...but I'll take a stable system at this point. :-) > > > > That said, in that thread I had asked about the advisability of > > upgrading to 6.2, and it was intelligently pointed out that doing so in > > pursuit of stability was a bad idea. Now that the box is stable, > > though, I'm back to the same question: should I make the upgrade, and > > if so, how should I do it? > > > > My primary driver for doing so would be to keep current enough that I'm > > still getting security and other patches on a regular basis, and that I > > can upgrade my applications from ports as necessary. If this is not an > > issue, then my only remaining concern would be that it's usually easier > > to get support on lists like this if you're running a modern version of > > the OS (that's certainly the case with the OpenBSD folks). > > > > My primary concern with upgrading is that the box is in Portland, OR, > > and I'm in Arlington, VA...and while the ISP is friendly, I doubt that > > I could count on them for major system recovery if I botch something > > during the upgrade. My other worry is that I don't want to break > > existing apps if possible (the main one I'm concerned about is > > Zope/Plone). This is a production box with moderate traffic, and it > > would be a problem if there was extensive downtime. > > > > Is it worth upgrading? If so, what's the best way to do so -- CVSup, or > > some other way? Are there any major caveats if I do choose to upgrade > > (or choose to stay with the existing OS)? > > You should if you can reasonably do it, for the reasons you give plus > improvements in performance and in some utilities. > > My sentiment is usually to do a clean install over major version numbers. > It tends to leave less dross laying around. but I do not have to worry > about down times very much, a couple of hours at night is not terribly > noticable in my stuff. It does require more time down to do a clean > from scratch install. But, I think you can get away with a cvsup upgrade > from 5.4 to 6.2. Then your downtime is just the reboot and stuff at single > user (mergemaster), plus probably some for upgrading various ports.
Yes, a source upgrade from 5.x to 6.x (followed by portupgrade -fa) isn't too bad. As with any upgrade you do need a recovery strategy though. Kris _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
