Binary upgrade from 8.4 to 10.1

[Paul Schmehl]

I am responsible for sysadmin work on two internet-facing servers -
www.stovebolt.com and mail.stovebolt.com. Both of these servers are
production servers, and we have no test or devel servers. (Small hobby
website with very little money.)

I want to upgrade from FreeBSD 8.4 RElEASE to FreeBSD 10.1 RELEASE using
FreeBSD update.

I've done this before, and I don't think I'll run into issues with the
binary update, but I want to make sure I do everything right and in the
right order.

Is there a document that describes this process with detailed steps that
doesn't leave anything out?

I did find this:
<http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2014-November/081088.html>

But I'm wondering if there is an official document that describes every
step of the process.

Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst
As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions
are my own and not those of my employer.
*******************************************
"It is as useless to argue with those who have
renounced the use of reason as to administer
medication to the dead." Thomas Jefferson
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very
intelligent person could believe in them." George Orwell

_______________________________________________
freebsd-...@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questi...@freebsd.org"

[John Howie]

Hi Paul,

The FreeBSD Handbook is your friend: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/updating-upgrading.html.

Regards,

John

[Paul Schmehl]

Thanks, John.

--On August 3, 2015 at 9:23:35 PM +0000 John Howie <jo...@thehowies.com>
wrote:

[Gregory Orange]

Hi Paul,

On 04/08/15 05:17, Paul Schmehl wrote:
> I want to upgrade from FreeBSD 8.4 RElEASE to FreeBSD 10.1 RELEASE using
> FreeBSD update.

I can't provide documentation or any certainty that it will work the
same for you as me, but I guess you might consider this a proof of
concept. Last month I upgraded a dozen or so FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE amd64
machines to FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE amd64 with this process, all run as root:

freebsd-update fetch install
freebsd-update -r 10.1-RELEASE upgrade
# Does this look reasonable (y/n)? y
# manual intervention for diffs etc
freebsd-update install
reboot

freebsd-update install
# Because ECDSA key wasn't present:
ssh-keygen -Av
pkg install -yf pkg
pkg install $(pkg info -aoq)
freebsd-update install
freebsd-update fetch install
# new shared objects made cron stop working until after a restart
# reboot would be more drastic but would fix any other similar issues
service cron restart
tail -F /var/log/auth.log /var/log/messages /var/log/cron

----

I had a critical failure on one hosted machine. SATA cables turned out
to be faulty, and the upgrade wrote some files successfully but not
others, leaving the machine in an unbootable state. High-latency console
access is the last straw, causing me to give up and rebuild the machine.

I don't blame FreeBSD for this (nor any OS which can't beat this
problem!), but mention it as a(n albeit unlikely) possibility to consider.

HTH,
Greg.

[Paul Schmehl]

I just upgraded one of our servers from 8.4-RELEASE to 10.2-RELEASE and had
very few problems - none with the actual upgrade. I followed the
instructions in the Handbook, as John suggested, and the upgrade went
smoothly.

I must admit, I was holding my breath. I've always sat at the console and
upgraded the old way (make installkernel, etc.), so this was my first time
upgrading using freebsd-update. (I did do an upgrade from 10.1-Beta to
10.2-RELEASE yesterday, but this is the first time jumping major versions.)

Kudos to Colin for a wonderful tool that makes life much easier.

--On August 3, 2015 at 4:39:57 PM -0500 Paul Schmehl

https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions