Going from -STABLE to -RELEASE with freebsd-update support?

Michael Sperber

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Oct 19, 2013, 8:45:45 AM10/19/13

to freebsd...@freebsd.org

I have an old server box that I've traditionally updated from source.
I'd like to switch over to -RELEASE and use freebsd-update in the
future. What's the easiest way to achieve that?

Will just untarring the relevantrelease distro files work?

--
Regards,
Mike

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Mathieu Arnold

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Oct 19, 2013, 8:56:46 AM10/19/13

to Michael Sperber, freebsd...@freebsd.org

+--On 19 octobre 2013 14:45:04 +0200 Michael Sperber

<spe...@deinprogramm.de> wrote:
|
| I have an old server box that I've traditionally updated from source.
| I'd like to switch over to -RELEASE and use freebsd-update in the
| future. What's the easiest way to achieve that?
|
| Will just untarring the relevantrelease distro files work?

One easy way to do it would be to use freebsd-update directly, say you're
running 8.3-STABLE and want to go to 8.4-RELEASE :

# UNAME_r=8.3-RELEASE freebsd-update -r 8.4-RELEASE upgrade

It'll trick freebsd-update into thinking it's running on 8.3-RELEASE, which
is more or less not that untrue, and it'll run the normal upgrade process
to 8.4.

--
Mathieu Arnold

Michael Sperber

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Oct 19, 2013, 11:05:13 AM10/19/13

to Mathieu Arnold, freebsd...@freebsd.org

Mathieu Arnold <m...@mat.cc> writes:

> One easy way to do it would be to use freebsd-update directly, say you're
> running 8.3-STABLE and want to go to 8.4-RELEASE :
>
> # UNAME_r=8.3-RELEASE freebsd-update -r 8.4-RELEASE upgrade
>
> It'll trick freebsd-update into thinking it's running on 8.3-RELEASE, which
> is more or less not that untrue, and it'll run the normal upgrade process
> to 8.4.

Thanks!

Last I checked, freebsd-update looked at the actual files and their
checksums, and would refuse to run if it doesn't find what it expects.
Will setting UNAME_r override this?

--
Regards,
Mike

Kevin Oberman

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Oct 19, 2013, 12:52:25 PM10/19/13

to Michael Sperber, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Stable, Mathieu Arnold

On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Michael Sperber <spe...@deinprogramm.de>wrote:

>
> Mathieu Arnold <m...@mat.cc> writes:
>
> > One easy way to do it would be to use freebsd-update directly, say you're
> > running 8.3-STABLE and want to go to 8.4-RELEASE :
> >
> > # UNAME_r=8.3-RELEASE freebsd-update -r 8.4-RELEASE upgrade
> >
> > It'll trick freebsd-update into thinking it's running on 8.3-RELEASE,
> which
> > is more or less not that untrue, and it'll run the normal upgrade process
> > to 8.4.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Last I checked, freebsd-update looked at the actual files and their
> checksums, and would refuse to run if it doesn't find what it expects.
> Will setting UNAME_r override this?
>
> --
> Regards,
> Mike
>

Another way is to simply update to 8.4-RELEASE and start using
freebsd-update from that point. I you are using svn, use the switch command
to change the repo branch from stable/8 to release/8.4.0. Then update
/usr/src and run the normal 'make' operations to get to 8.4-RELEASE. Make
sure that you are either running a GENERIC kernel or install one into
/boot. You're ready to go.

--
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
E-mail: rkob...@gmail.com

Mathieu Arnold

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Oct 19, 2013, 1:42:53 PM10/19/13

to Michael Sperber, freebsd...@freebsd.org

freebsd-update will look at the checksums so that it can download patches, it will download the entire files if it cannot patch them, it has worked for me in the past quite a lot of times.
Setting UNAME_r will make it think you have a supported release as an upgrade base.

--
Mathieu Arnold