Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
On Sun, Jun 06, 2004 at 11:41:15PM +0200, Roman Kennke wrote: Hi list, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), over network. This may or may not be an option for you: both IBM and HP (Compaq) offer remote supervisor cards that offer network access to the machine, even when it is booting, etc. You can use it to access the BIOS, watch the machine boot, get into single user mode, etc, all from your chair in another city. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
Are these supervisor cards unique to IBM HP? Can the card be bought separately and will they work on generic motherboard? Do you have URL for info on these supervisor cards? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Peter Pauly Sent: Friday, June 11, 2004 1:07 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release On Sun, Jun 06, 2004 at 11:41:15PM +0200, Roman Kennke wrote: Hi list, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), over network. This may or may not be an option for you: both IBM and HP (Compaq) offer remote supervisor cards that offer network access to the machine, even when it is booting, etc. You can use it to access the BIOS, watch the machine boot, get into single user mode, etc, all from your chair in another city. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 01:54:26PM -0400, JJB wrote: Are these supervisor cards unique to IBM HP? Can the card be bought separately and will they work on generic motherboard? Do you have URL for info on these supervisor cards? They are unique to each manufacturer. I am not aware of a generic one. We currently use IBM's. Just google for IBM remote supervisor II. The IBM can even be accessed via a web browser (with password security obviously). I'm not up-to-date on the Compaq's. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
On Fri, 11 Jun 2004, Peter Pauly wrote: On Fri, Jun 11, 2004 at 01:54:26PM -0400, JJB wrote: Are these supervisor cards unique to IBM HP? Can the card be bought separately and will they work on generic motherboard? Do you have URL for info on these supervisor cards? They are unique to each manufacturer. I am not aware of a generic one. We currently use IBM's. Just google for IBM remote supervisor II. The IBM can even be accessed via a web browser (with password security obviously). I'm not up-to-date on the Compaq's. the Compaq (new HP) one is called remote insight light out edition II a quick google should find the relevent URL I'd be supprised if it works in non Compaq/HP servers though. (meant to try it but we dont have any at my current workplace :( ) some more modern Compaq/HP servers have them intergrated. one nice feature I like is the Virtual floppy drive. if you realy needed to you could (in theory, never tried it) install any OS that supports floppy based installs without having to go near the machine if the light out board had the right network settings. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
Of course you wouldn't want to upgrade from 5.1 to 5.2 remotely. You have to fix things between these two releases in single user. In my case, the userland wouldn't completely install. I had to manually copy files from the build directory to their locations on the file system in order to get this to work. Not all the files, but enough to get the install to work. You can pull this off on the 4.x tree without a hitch. I did upgrades from 4.7 to 4.8 to 4.8 stable to 4.9 release remotely on a machine without a problem. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
Ok, thank you all for response. As far as I see things now, the best way to upgrade from one stable release to the next is via source upgrade. Configuration files probably need some attention, because mergemaster cannot be run remotely. Upgrading from one major release to the next (4.x - 5.x) is practically not possible remotely, or at least _very_ difficult. Upgrade problems like the statd issue will not occur with stable branches. There is no other good way to upgrade remotely, is it? What about old files from the previous release? Will these be deleted properly with source upgrade? I've heard of occasional problems with old libraries lying around. Are there any efforts to improve the software managment in the base system? NetBSD for instance has once started a system-pkgsrc project (but does not seem to continue this), which I think is a great idea. Managing the system software with pkg_add and friends would be nice IMO. /Roman signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
Hey Roman, Roman Kennke wrote: Hi list, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), over network. I mean, I have a server running, to which I have no physical access. The only way to maintain it, is over SSH. The upgrade instructions in INSTALL.txt suggest putting in the CD, and using sysinstall for a binary upgrade. That is no option for me. What I am looking for is an upgrade method which - can be used over an SSH connection - is not too difficult (like manually placing each piece in the right place) - does not leave old stuff on the HD (like the sysinstall method does, AFAIK) ... to make it short, something like the ports system (especially portupgrade) does with non-system apps would be cool. I use CVSup to update my system and then rebuild as described in the /usr/src/Makefile file, (yeah yeah there is a UPDATING file on should follow), the only thing that i am not doing, since i dont have physical access as well, is boot into single user mode and run mergemaster, mostly i am keen of knowing what changes , so far on my 5.x servers there weren't any issue's requiring mergemaster to run. Apart from that i updated my systems many times, without being in single user mode, with an ssh connection. Hope this helps a bit.. ow yeah /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui is where the cvsup lives :) Cheers Is there a way to achieve that? This would be the one bit, which would make me switch to FreeBSD. /Roman -- Kind regards, Remko Lodder Elvandar.org/DSINet.org www.mostly-harmless.nl Dutch community for helping newcomers on the hackerscene ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
On Sunday 06 June 2004 02:44 pm, Remko Lodder wrote: Hey Roman, Roman Kennke wrote: Hi list, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), over network. I mean, I have a server running, to which I have no physical access. The only way to maintain it, is over SSH. The upgrade instructions in INSTALL.txt suggest putting in the CD, and using sysinstall for a binary upgrade. That is no option for me. What I am looking for is an upgrade method which - can be used over an SSH connection - is not too difficult (like manually placing each piece in the right place) - does not leave old stuff on the HD (like the sysinstall method does, AFAIK) ... to make it short, something like the ports system (especially portupgrade) does with non-system apps would be cool. I use CVSup to update my system and then rebuild as described in the /usr/src/Makefile file, (yeah yeah there is a UPDATING file on should follow), the only thing that i am not doing, since i dont have physical access as well, is boot into single user mode and run mergemaster, mostly i am keen of knowing what changes , so far on my 5.x servers there weren't any issue's requiring mergemaster to run. Apart from that i updated my systems many times, without being in single user mode, with an ssh connection. This doesn't work on the upgrade to 5.2 from 5.1. You have to boot into single user mode to do the installworld. You have incompatible features at this upgrade. Kent Hope this helps a bit.. ow yeah /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui is where the cvsup lives :) Cheers Is there a way to achieve that? This would be the one bit, which would make me switch to FreeBSD. /Roman -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
Hi, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), .. Apart from that i updated my systems many times, without being in single user mode, with an ssh connection. This doesn't work on the upgrade to 5.2 from 5.1. You have to boot into single user mode to do the installworld. You have incompatible features at this upgrade. Exactly these kinds of hassles I don't want. I am wondering - FreeBSD has built such a nice thing like the ports system. It's a work of genius. Only that the install/upgrade process of the system itself is completely different (and not very convenient IMO). Is it not possible to 'port' the System stuff into the ports system (or a different ports system, say, the 'system ports' or something like that). Just an idea. Ok, are there other ways? Isn't there a script, which places the new archives over the old ones, and removes the stuff, that's left from the old system? Or is this a too-difficult task? /Roman signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
On Sunday 06 June 2004 02:55 pm, Roman Kennke wrote: Hi, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), .. Apart from that i updated my systems many times, without being in single user mode, with an ssh connection. This doesn't work on the upgrade to 5.2 from 5.1. You have to boot into single user mode to do the installworld. You have incompatible features at this upgrade. Exactly these kinds of hassles I don't want. I am wondering - FreeBSD has built such a nice thing like the ports system. It's a work of genius. Only that the install/upgrade process of the system itself is completely different (and not very convenient IMO). Is it not possible to 'port' the System stuff into the ports system (or a different ports system, say, the 'system ports' or something like that). Just an idea. Ok, are there other ways? Isn't there a script, which places the new archives over the old ones, and removes the stuff, that's left from the old system? Or is this a too-difficult task? The problem with 5.1 5.2 is called statfs. See, /usr/src/UPDATING. It will run with a new kernel and not the old kernel. If you do an installworld before you do an installkernel, you have to use the fixit CD to fix it. For a while, they thought you had to do a clean install. I have no idea what happens if you boot to a 5.2 kernel with a 5.1 userland. The ports are entirely different because they don't deal with basic things such as fs'es. Somewhere in the 5.2 chain is the port problem with pthreads. You can count on rebuilding all of your ports that use pthreads. Portupgrade does a lot of what you talk about but I always use puf and it avoids moving the libraries in to the compat directory. Kent -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
Am Mo, den 07.06.2004 schrieb Kent Stewart um 0:03: On Sunday 06 June 2004 02:55 pm, Roman Kennke wrote: Hi, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), .. Apart from that i updated my systems many times, without being in single user mode, with an ssh connection. This doesn't work on the upgrade to 5.2 from 5.1. You have to boot into single user mode to do the installworld. You have incompatible features at this upgrade. Exactly these kinds of hassles I don't want. I am wondering - FreeBSD has built such a nice thing like the ports system. It's a work of genius. Only that the install/upgrade process of the system itself is completely different (and not very convenient IMO). Is it not possible to 'port' the System stuff into the ports system (or a different ports system, say, the 'system ports' or something like that). Just an idea. Ok, are there other ways? Isn't there a script, which places the new archives over the old ones, and removes the stuff, that's left from the old system? Or is this a too-difficult task? The problem with 5.1 5.2 is called statfs. See, /usr/src/UPDATING. It will run with a new kernel and not the old kernel. If you do an installworld before you do an installkernel, you have to use the fixit CD to fix it. For a while, they thought you had to do a clean install. Ugly. I am not too familiar with the internals of FreeBSD. But I really think, that in the long run, FreeBSD must have a more clever software managment for the system stuff. Something like 'apt-get dist-upgrade' comes to mind, or 'emerge -Ud world'. It should be possible to track what changes from one point release to the next one, and do most of the upgrade stuff automatically (excluding most configuration) and without a CD. Rebuilding the ports tree stuff after the upgrade is not the problem (because this is already managed in a very good way). All I want is not reinstalling the system after every few releases. The FreeBSD team should care about an possibility to easily upgrade from at least one point release to another. Only my suggestion. Best regards, Roman signature.asc Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil
RE: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
The source upgrade is not the problem, it's when on those rare times that system configuration file statements are added or changed that requiring mergemaster to run. There is no way around that condition when that happens. The 5.1 to 5.2 case is special just because 5.x is development branch. You would not see this in stable branch upgrades. Now I think I read about an case where an person had two remote headless systems and he set each one up with an serial console to the other system. So he could have ssh session to box A which had serial console connection to box B that he then could put box B into single user mode to do mergemaster and return back to multi user mode. Then he would use ssh session to box B who had serial console connection to box A and do same thing to box A. So there is an way around your remote problem as long as you have two boxes at same remote location. You know the real simple solution is to do your upgrade to local box and remove hard disk and ship it to remote location and have short downtime while hard drives are swapped. All ways have an single IDE drive just for your operation system separate from your data drives. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Kent Stewart Sent: Sunday, June 06, 2004 5:49 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Remko Lodder; Roman Kennke Subject: Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release On Sunday 06 June 2004 02:44 pm, Remko Lodder wrote: Hey Roman, Roman Kennke wrote: Hi list, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), over network. I mean, I have a server running, to which I have no physical access. The only way to maintain it, is over SSH. The upgrade instructions in INSTALL.txt suggest putting in the CD, and using sysinstall for a binary upgrade. That is no option for me. What I am looking for is an upgrade method which - can be used over an SSH connection - is not too difficult (like manually placing each piece in the right place) - does not leave old stuff on the HD (like the sysinstall method does, AFAIK) ... to make it short, something like the ports system (especially portupgrade) does with non-system apps would be cool. I use CVSup to update my system and then rebuild as described in the /usr/src/Makefile file, (yeah yeah there is a UPDATING file on should follow), the only thing that i am not doing, since i dont have physical access as well, is boot into single user mode and run mergemaster, mostly i am keen of knowing what changes , so far on my 5.x servers there weren't any issue's requiring mergemaster to run. Apart from that i updated my systems many times, without being in single user mode, with an ssh connection. This doesn't work on the upgrade to 5.2 from 5.1. You have to boot into single user mode to do the installworld. You have incompatible features at this upgrade. Kent Hope this helps a bit.. ow yeah /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui is where the cvsup lives :) Cheers Is there a way to achieve that? This would be the one bit, which would make me switch to FreeBSD. /Roman -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
On Mon, 7 Jun 2004, Roman Kennke wrote: All I want is not reinstalling the system after every few releases. The FreeBSD team should care about an possibility to easily upgrade from at least one point release to another. Only my suggestion. Have you read the Handbook chapter called The Cutting Edge? It describes the standard method of updating the system via source. Not a difficult process, although it can be time-consuming. It works; one of my servers started at 4.1, and is now running 4.10. Problems arise when you switch branches (4.x to 5.x), and apparently there have been difficulties in the 5.x branch. But 5.x is not a release version yet, so that's to be expected. -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
Roman Kennke writes: All I want is not reinstalling the system after every few releases. My first installation of FreeBSD was 2.0.5. Since then I have done a clean install for x.0 releases - as a matter of policy (excuse to upgrade hardware, plus it cleans out orphaned files) but not necessity. (Or am I not remembering a red flag day between 2.x and 3.0?) Between .0s, I have successfully upgraded using the method described in the handbook. These days I'm more worried about a port upgrade trashing a config file. Have I had problems? Yes. All of them turned out to be hardware-related or me doing something stupid that broke the process. Robert huff ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Upgrading FreeBSD to a new release
On Sun, 6 Jun 2004, Roman Kennke wrote: Hi list, One thing, that is making me _not_ using FreeBSD is, that I see no way to easily upgrade from, say 5.1 to 5.2 (just an example), over network. I mean, I have a server running, to which I have no physical access. The only way to maintain it, is over SSH. The upgrade instructions in INSTALL.txt suggest putting in the CD, and using sysinstall for a binary upgrade. That is no option for me. What I am looking for is an upgrade method which - can be used over an SSH connection - is not too difficult (like manually placing each piece in the right place) - does not leave old stuff on the HD (like the sysinstall method does, AFAIK) Generally this can be done (though it is not recommended) the way that is described in Chapter 21 of the handbook - you just don't drop into single user mode. But you shouldn't track -CURRENT then, since -CURRENT developers tend to produce some horrible bugs every two or three months. Do test this upgrade procedure on a local machine, so you know how things work. ... to make it short, something like the ports system (especially portupgrade) does with non-system apps would be cool. Is there a way to achieve that? This would be the one bit, which would make me switch to FreeBSD. I am convinced you will. Uli. /Roman +---+ |Peter Ulrich Kruppa| | Wuppertal | | Germany | +---+ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
