Olivier Cherrier wrote:
> 
> I use to do such upgrades with OpenBSD and I have the feeling that it
> is quite more easy and better documented (man release). I hope it's
> a wrong feeling.
> Any help appreciated.
> 
As I posted here a few days ago, folks are having problems updating 
-current only a few months old, let alone from 1.6 or 1.6.1.

I have to agree, OpenBSD is/was easier and better documented.  

I came back to NetBSD last year about this time, with the release of 
1.6, and promptly tried to upgrade 1.6 to -current on a test machine.  
It took a fair amount of help....  (Thanks Perry and Niels!)

Admittedly, build.sh was really improved a lot in December/January.

Some months ago, I tried to help update the NetBSD documentation, but 
the PR has never been committed.

So far, the best (undocumented) method has turned out to be (off the 
top of my head from memory): 

  ftp://releng.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD-daily/current/

  FTP a release into your favorite directory (assuming /root) that's 
  about a week old and nobody complained about on this list, say  
  cd 200309280000/i386/binary/sets/
  mget *.tgz
  quit

  tar -zxpf kern-GENERIC.tgz 
  cd /
  mv /netbsd /netbsd.old
  mv /root/netbsd /netbsd
  tar -zxpf /root/base.tgz 
  tar -zxpf /root/comp.tgz 
  ... (as many more as you like, just base and comp are essential)
  reboot

After that, the build.sh process will work a lot better.  

And build.sh install=/ will also walk you through postinstall and 
etcupdate, both of which have improved dramatically in the past year.

-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32