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#! rnews 2781 bsd Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.sprintlink.net!in1.uu.net!news.maz.net!news.ppp.net!news.Hanse.DE!wavehh.hanse.de!cracauer From: cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de (Martin Cracauer) Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.1 upgrade path from 2.0.5 Message-ID: <1995Oct6.080719.17925@wavehh.hanse.de> Organization: BSD User Group Hamburg References: <ckQ_zVG00YUw4iJ1ti@andrew.cmu.edu> <DFw9DA.F5@yedi.iaf.nl> <JKH.95Oct4204634@time.cdrom.com> Date: Fri, 6 Oct 95 08:07:19 GMT Lines: 44 jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes: >Actually, I am putting an "Upgrade" option in the 2.1 install. I >finally got sick enough of the problem to do something about it >personally. It should be out in the snapshot-after-next for testing. >I'm willing to entertain suggestions about what kinds of things those >of you contemplating an upgrade from 2.0.x to 2.1 would like to see - >it's not too late! I've only just started the implementation phase. >So far, it will basically mount up all your former partitions, copy >your /etc someplace, extract the selected dists over the top and then >resurrect old /etc into new as best possible using some very simple >heuristics for deciding when to copy old back over new. Finally, it >dumps you into a shell on the new system and lets you poke around >and/or adjust stuff as you see fit before rebooting. That's all it >does, that's the "upgrade." Anyone feeling strongly that it should be >more is definitely encouraged to contact me ASAP. I think one of the biggest problems with such upgrades is /etc/rc.local. A new release probably changes some of the predefined things here, but most likely rc.local is changed by the user, too. User-chaned things can be of two brands: 1) Appended lines to start local daemons and such 2) Changed predefined lines (ldconfig etc.) I think the user should not append anything to one of the predefined rc-files. Instead, I think we should have a /etc/rc.this_maschine or something that is empty or nonexstent in the standard distribution and sourced at the end of rc.local. On my machines, this is named /etc/local/rc (I have /usr/local, /etc/local, /var/local etc for everything I add to a system). The diffs between the pre-update,user-edited rc.local to the pre-updated,as-distributed rc.local are likely to be nonexistend or trivial then and therefore the change to the mortal user to do it right in the post-updare rc.local is better. Martin -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Martin Cracauer <cracauer@wavehh.hanse.de> - Fax +49 40 522 85 36 BSD User Group Hamburg, Germany - No NeXTMail anymore, please. Copyright 1995, Redistribution via Microsoft Network is prohibited