On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 07:07:22PM -0400, Michael W. Oliver wrote: > Colin, > > Thanks for the verbose and reasoned explanation. Since the email last > week, I have taken the opportunity to upgrade two machines, one here and > one remote (both with serial console) from 4.9->5.5->6.2PRE, and while I > can't say that I did it blindfolded, it wasn't too painful. The upgrade > instructions at... > > http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/migration-guide.html > > ...were as close to perfect as could be (and for those who might ask me > for a step-by-step howto, look to the above URL). A few things that I > should mention to others trying this are... > > 0. Backup, and then check your backups! > > 1. Be prepared to spend a lot of time in single-user mode, especially > for the 4->5 step, because there is a LOT for mergemaster to do. The > step from 5->6 is not nearly as painful. I didn't try to do the > installworld and mergemaster in multiuser, and if you do then have a > bigger set than I do. > > 2. Trust the migration guide when it says to use a default kernel > configuration file unless you are 100% prepared to reap what you sow. > > 3. Be prepared to spend a lot of time (depending on the speed of your > machines) rebuilding all of your ports. Don't skimp on this step. > > 4. On one of my machines (the local one, thank God!), I started getting > weird pauses and bus errors when trying to rebuild my ports, and then > noticed that the acpi.ko wasn't being loaded at boot. Turns out that I > had disabled ACPI in the BIOS back when the machine was originally built > for v4. Since switching on ACPI in the BIOS, those issues have totally > cleared.
Good advice. You can make step 3 easier by using the precompiled packages where possible, e.g. "portupgrade -faP" Kris
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