Upgrading question

[lm8]

I'm currently running FreeBSD 7.2 on an old, low resource laptop. I added a lot of programs as packages, but I've also built several from scratch (some not even in ports). The only connection to the machine is basically sneaker-net (DVD or USB 1.0). Is there an easy way to update to the latest version of FreeBSD or should I just leave it running the version I have? If there is an easy way to update via sneaker-net, could someone please point me to some documentation or instructions?

Thanks.

 

[roddierod]

If the machine is running fine and if a newer version of FreeBSD yields no significant benefits, why upgrade? If you spent all that time building a machine and it ain't broke - don't fix it.

 

[vivek]

Yes, you can upgrade it using standard tools. Newer software means more features and more bugs too so it is upto you.

 

[fronclynne]

I should note that this is only if you're willing to upgrade from source (my preferred method)

the most recent 8.1 RC ( ftp://ftp5.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/8.1/ ) should have the most recent sources inside $CDROOT/8.1-RC2/src/ (or some variation on that).

You can also just dl everything from ftp://ftp5.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/8.1-RC2/src/ to some directory, copy it to a disk, move it, mount it, & set DESTDIR and run install.sh.

(use whatever mirror is closest and fastest)


The cdrom itself can also be used to directly upgrade, there's a menu option on sysinstall for it, I believe.

 

[lm8]

Thanks for the information. I'm thinking of giving the upgrade from cdrom option a try after I backup or document any changes I made. Sounds like the easiest option for now. Thanks for the info on updating from source. I'll check into that as well.

The main reason I wanted to update the laptop to a later version is that I'm hoping to install FreeBSD to my desktop computer as well and would like to share programs I build across the two systems. Figured it would be better to install the latest release to my desktop.