*BSD News Article 20539


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!news.isi.edu!gremlin!lazarus.nrtc.northrop.com!dec
From: dec@lazarus.nrtc.northrop.com (Dwight E. Cass)
Subject: Upgraded Successfully to FreeBSD!
Message-ID: <CCz1My.FrF@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com>
Sender: news@gremlin.nrtc.northrop.com (Usenet News Manager)
Organization: Northrop Research & Technology Center, Palos Verdes, CA
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1993 06:49:45 GMT
Lines: 41

Well, I bit the bullet and upgraded my system from 386BSD patchkit
0.2.4 to FreeBSD this weekend and while it took a full day, it was
pretty painless.  Here is a quick summary of things I found:

	1. I had to finally relabel my disk (i.e., run disklabel
	   and install the new boot blocks) since FreeBSD would not
	   boot with my old boot blocks.  Ran disklabel off of the
	   FreeBSD disk with my old disktab file - worked fine.
	   (i.e., no files lost..)

	2. Once I relabeled the disk, I cpio'ed the base files to
	   the disk, copied the kernel to the hard disk and rebooted
	   my system.  I forgot to reboot the system single user and
	   came up with 1/2 FreeBSD (such as the password DB) and 1/2
	   386BSD - argh, couldn't login so I had to hard reset.  Ran
	   the old 386BSD fixit disk to fsck the problems and rebooted
	   single user.

	3. At this point, I was basically back to a FreeBSD install,
	   except that I also had the full contents of my old disk.
	   I moved my old /usr/src to /usr/old.src and did the
	   install.  Bingo - everything came up.
	
I am now going through and rebuilding all of my local utilities that touch
the password DB (it's amazing how many utilities do that!).  As for
the system itself - its wonderful!  SCSI drivers are far more stable
and forgiving of minor errors - multitask performance seems improved
(i.e., on an 8Meg system I was able to build a kernel under X and
could still move the mouse - I was amazed!), serial performance is
still great (thank you for the sio code), and my old 386BSD binaries
work as before, minus the DB issues.  At-a-boys all around to
everyone involved with this release!

Thanks for FreeBSD!
/dec

Dwight E. Cass                 dec@nrtc.northrop.com | You are in a
Automation Sciences Laboratory, Northrop Corporation |   twisty maze of
One Research Park, Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA  90274 | Sendmail rules,
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