A few questions before upgrade 7.2 to 8.0

B

bryn1u

Hello.

I have a few questions. I bought a dedicated server but without KVM and panel. I want to upgrade ma server from 7.2 to 8.0. I found this solusion
FreeBSD Update

The freebsd-update(8) utility supports binary upgrades of i386 and amd64 systems running earlier FreeBSD releases. Systems running 7.[012]-RELEASE, 8.0-BETA[1234], or 8.0-RC[123] can upgrade as follows:

# freebsd-update upgrade -r 8.0-RELEASE

During this process, FreeBSD Update may ask the user to help by merging some configuration files or by confirming that the automatically performed merging was done correctly.

# freebsd-update install

The system must be rebooted with the newly installed kernel before continuing.

# shutdown -r now

After rebooting, freebsd-update needs to be run again to install the new userland components:

# freebsd-update install
Click to expand...

I'm afraid that after reboot a server will be not able. This solusion is that good way to upgrade freebsd ? Only this steps (in quote) should i use to upgrade freebsd or something else ?
 
Any remote major upgrade is risky, so don't expect a "Yeah, go right ahead!" answer here (from anyone sane, that is). Any OS upgrade usually involves some work in single-user mode (not mandatory, but certainly safer, esp. with a major version upgrade), which can't be done without local access or console access. So whether you use freebsd-update or the source-based upgrade process, there are inherent risks when done 'over the wire'.
 
I used # freebsd-update upgrade -r 8.0-RELEASE . So How can i back to the beggining. What happen if i use reboot command ?
 
I don't know exactly how the freebsd-update process works, whether it does things in multiple steps like a buildworld process (install kernel, reboot, install world, reboot, for example). If it can be broken down into steps (install new kernel via freebsd-update, reboot to test kernel, install world via freebsd-update, reboot), then it can be made "remote-install safe".

To make an upgrade process "remote-install safe", you need to be able to install the new/upgraded kernel into a separate directory (/boot/kernel.new for example), then use nextboot() to instruct the loader to use /boot/kernel.new on the next reboot. That way, if the boot fails, a simple reset of the server will cause it to boot using the normal, known-to-work kernel (/boot/kernel).

If the boot succeeds, then you know the new kernel works, and you can install the world, and rename things under /boot to use the new kernel ( cp -Rp /boot/kernel /boot/kernel.old; mv /boot/kernel.new /boot/kernel).

Doing the above is quite simple as part of a buildworld cycle, as you can specify the kernel install directory using KODIR: [cmd=]make KERNCONF=MYKERNEL KODIR=/boot/kernel.new installkernel[/cmd]. Hopefully, freebsd-update can be split into separate parts.
 
yep nextboot is a sweet feature for remote upgrading.

however I have had one situation where I was upgrading a server from 6.3 to 7.0 where the 7.0 kernel booted but the reboot after the installworld failed, most likely I made a mistake during mergemaster as I did rush through it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top