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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!news.uoregon.edu!usenet.coe.montana.edu!bsd.coe.montana.edu!nate From: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: Upgrading just binaries to 1.1.5.1? Date: 14 Jul 1994 19:19:30 GMT Organization: Montana State University, Bozeman Montana Lines: 44 Message-ID: <304342$9i2@pdq.coe.montana.edu> References: <LEWIKK.94Jul9205222@grasshopper.aud.alcatel.com> <knight.4.00099DA4@caboom.zko.dec.com> <302m8l$9tp@quagga.ru.ac.za> <knight.6.0007ADB0@caboom.zko.dec.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 153.90.192.29 In article <knight.6.0007ADB0@caboom.zko.dec.com>, Dave Knight <knight@caboom.zko.dec.com> wrote: >I still find it a bit hard to believe that the best way to upgrade is to do a >full reinstall followed by a reinstall of the various packages and files that >were set up andtailored for a previous version. That sort of implies that it >would be easier and safer to do a full source build based on the new source >tree, rather than attempting to do some sort of a binary update. True? Depends on your definition of 'best'. For the untrained user, this is by far the 'best' solution since it leaves little to chance. You can't hurt yourself to the point of blowing your machine up. However, for those folks who are more experienced in Unix system administration, there are 'better' ways of upgrading that require a bit more thought and care. However, generally those folks already know how to do upgrades so they don't ask questions such as this. >>(One upgrade based on a full install, and then reloading local files >>from tape took me a little over 2 hours.) > >Any future plans to make upgrades a bit less effort than full installs? In general, the development is happening so quickly that upgrades are essentially full installs. The release that has the least amount of changes to the entire system was from 1.1->1.1.5 (1.1.5 was mostly a kernel upgrade), but there were enough changes in it that effectively every binary changed, so it required re-installing all the binaries and most of the configuration files.) There's no bullet-proof way to do upgrades w/out a LOT of work that can be better spent making the next product better, and doing a good upgrade procedure is BORING and not very rewarding. (I did the 386BSD->FreeBSD 1.0 upgrade script, and believe I really don't want to do that again.) In short, you get what you pay for. :-) We try our best to make it easy, but when that starts to become more work it's best to leave it alone and go do something more fun. Nate -- nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu | FreeBSD core member and all around tech. nate@cs.montana.edu | weenie. work #: (406) 994-4836 | home #: (406) 586-0579 | Available for contract/otherwise work.