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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.syd.connect.com.au!phaedrus.kralizec.net.au!news.mel.aone.net.au!grumpy.fl.net.au!news.webspan.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!uuneo.neosoft.com!news From: conrads@neosoft.com (Conrad Sabatier) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: 2.1.6.1 Upgrade gripe Date: 26 Jan 1997 05:16:01 GMT Organization: NeoSoft, Inc. Lines: 39 Message-ID: <5cepah$936@uuneo.neosoft.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 206.27.167.40 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.8 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34518 Just got the CD-ROM the other day from Walnut Creek and decided to do the upgrade from 2.1.5 today. The same old aggravation with the IDE CD-ROM drive. Grrrr! Which brings to mind a troubling question: *why* is it necessary to use DOS at all to *upgrade*? This seems ridiculous to me. Doing it entirely from FreeBSD would be infinitely preferable, especially in the case of a not-always-recognized IDE drive; one could simply use "Install from existing file system" and give it the mount point of the CD-ROM (my CD-ROM drive works fine under the (custom) kernel I've been using, but is consistently overlooked by every install kernel to date). Making a UNIX upgrade DOS-dependent is just plain not a good idea! Also, there should be a quick and easy way to upgrade the /stand directory alone, so that one could then run the correct /stand/sysinstall for the version one is upgrading to. I *was* going to try a "backdoor" approach, using 2.1.5 sysinstall's upgrade option, but it's not compatible with the 2.1.6 CD-ROM. What if I didn't want to have DOS on my machine at all? How would I go about upgrading? Looks like I'm going to have to revert to the method I used for my very first FreeBSD install: copy the minimal distribution to DOS and install from there, then upgrade the rest later from the CD. Considerably more attention needs to be given to this in future releases. I wouldn't even consider recommending FreeBSD to any of my friends, as I'm sure they would all end up cursing my name after pulling their hair out trying to install the thing. Grrrr! -- Conrad Sabatier | conrads@neosoft.com | Eschew obfuscation. http://www.neosoft.com/~conrads |