I'm hardly an expert so I hope you get some other opinions but here
are my thoughts:
On 2/10/06, Constantine A. Murenin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At a remote location, I have two boxes that are connected with each
> other via a serial cable, and through a router to the internet.
>
> One of the boxes is OpenBSD 3.6, and I'd like to upgrade it to 3.8,
> and then compile -current (I want to play with the kernel alongside
> sensors.h / lm(4)).
>
> What's the best way to do it?
>
> I guess, wget'ing the bsd.rd from ftp.openbsd.org mirror would be the
> best "installation media", but then upon reboot should I choose
> 'upgrade' and do 3.6 -> 3.7, then repeat the procedure with 3.7 ->
> 3.8, then cvsup and compile the -current from sources? Or should I
> 'install' 3.8, then cvsup -current, and compile?
>
The FAQ somewhere suggests "of course, starting with a fresh install
is always best".
> If I'll choose to install 3.8, then will I be able to leave my
> partitioning scheme and contents of my custom partitions intact? Or
> will I have to repartition the drive?
The install script does run fdisk and disklabel but there's no reason
you can't simply quit both immediately without making changes. All
"installing" consists of is untarring the various install sets,
writing some /etc/*.conf files with info from the user, using MAKEDEV
to make various device nodes (not that I really understand what that
means) and--oh--running newfs. I guess it would kill your partitions
then. Probably upgrading is your best bet then, and I'm pretty sure
you can go 3.6->3.8 immediately. Perhaps you could install by hand if
all else fails?
>
>
> tvc:constant {172} df -h ; disklabel wd0 ; fdisk wd0
> Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
...
> /dev/wd0m 7.9G 2.0K 7.5G 0% /mozilla
You have an entire partition for mozilla? I'm curious why (I'm
somewhat a newbie, I like enlightenment).
...
> P.S. Is the upgrade really that simple and straightforward on OpenBSD
> as it seems to be? :-)
Yes.
> P.P.S. BTW, as you can see I have some free disc space left... Is it
> possible to install two versions of OpenBSD on separate slices of one
> HDD and multiboot them? Or better and simpler just do the upgrade? :-)
>
Of course it's possible to multiboot them, so long as they live on
separate MBR partitions. Then just use
$sudo fdisk -e wd0
>flag n #n is 0 or 1, the partition you want to boot from
to switch between each.
But reallly... it's simpler to upgrade.
-Kousu
