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Binary Upgrade Visually How-To

BINARY UPGRADE HOW TO
This is a binary upgrade step through from 3.4-Release to 4.0-Release, it is in depth and should provide a rather "think free" instructions for upgrading from 3.4 -> 4.0 and future versions

Why upgrade binary style and not via source?
Well there are many positive reasons. The most popular reasons that come to my mind is that you
can be more sure you will get the final result, its alot faster then building all from source
and requires alot less hard drive space.

Lets get to it!
The first thing you should do is read all the TXT files in your /4.0-RELEASE-i386 dir
Next backup your files! If your wondering what you should backup, the main files I back up are
my config files in /etc and /usr/local/etc. Basically all the files you would wish you still had
if your whole hard drive spontaneously combusted are the ones you should backup :).

Planning
I am going to show you the way to do a binary upgrade from an existing partition although you
should be able to do it all the other common ways, existing partition upgrade I think is easiest.
We are going to be doing a binary + Ports + X windows + kernel sources install.
So you will have to delete your /usr/src/sys and /usr/ports/ directory, you should save your
/usr/src/sys/i386/conf/ kernel options file just to look at but not use for your 4.0 kernel
compile.

If you are on dialup you may consider moving your /usr/ports/distfiles dir somewhere
else that contains all your downloads that ports has retrieved if you have installed software
from ports via the internet and move it back once the install is over.

Take note of the information from the "df" command as it will help you mount your partitions
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0s1a 49583 39433 6184 86% /
/dev/wd0s1f 1106911 877351 141008 86% /usr
/dev/wd0s1e 19815 5385 12845 30% /var

All you really need is the Mounted on dir and the size

Make your boot floppies.
Although you will be installing from your hard drive you start things up from the boot floppies.
Info on floppie creation here.
http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/install-guide.html#INSTALL-FLOPPIES

Next step is to copy all the install files from /4.0-RELEASE-i386/ dir to your Freebsd hard drive
or any hard drive you can mount that has enough space to hold all of the installation files so
it looks like this

/usr/temp/4.0-RELEASE-i386/src/
/usr/temp/4.0-RELEASE-i386/Errata.txt

Ready to start
Boot from the boot floppies
Go through your kernel configuration
Then when you get to the Sysinstall Main Menu choose UPGRADE

Choose Yes to proceed
Choose the Binary + Ports + X windows + kernel sources install or what ever you prefer


When you get to the FreeBSD Disklabel Editor all you have to do with it is mount your old
partitions with the right directory name, I have to mount /usr, /var and / (root).
These vary depending on how you last configured your partitions so you will have to do
things a little differently.
Use the arrow keys select your first partition and choose M to mount
When it asks the mount point put / if its your root partition.
Leave the swap as it is.
Do this for all the drives from the infomation you collected from "df"
when done hit Q


It should go on and check the hard drives then ask you where you want to save the etc directory?
the default place is a good one /usr/tmp/etc

Next you will be presented with the Choose Installation Media menu and asked where your
FreeBSD installation files are, so choose 6 for File System - Install from an existing filesystem
and enter the dir where you put the files

 

/usr/temp/4.0-RELEASE-i386
If the directory did not exist check your case


Your home
Once you have finished the install you will have to recompile your kernel and then look at every
file in /etc that has the new file date release and compare that with your old saved ones and
reconfigure them if you need

Then check the latest errata at http://www.freebsd.org/releases/ for any known bugs.

Pat your self on the back you now have a FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE install :)

By : Purpy

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