On Mon, Jul 29, 2002 at 05:22:30PM -0700, B. James Phillippe wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I have a production Alpha box running 1.5.2 with 3rd-party packages from
> pkgsrc as well as some locally-installed applications.  I would like to
> upgrade to 1.5.3, but I don't want to lose my /etc, /usr/home, or other
> vital directories.
> 
> What would be better:
> 
> 1.) backup everything important, do a full install from CD, then restore
> important stuff by hand  [this sounds terrible]
> 
> 2.) backup everything important, install over the top from CD, then make
> sure the upgrade didn't wipe anything out  [this sounds okay, assuming
> that the upgrade process will only overwrite files and not reformat/delete
> things not present in the base install, and that it will either leave /etc
> untouched or create a copy of it]
> 
> 3.) backup everything important, install over the top from CVS using "make
> build"  [this is preferable, with the same assumptions as above]

There is an upgrade option in sysinst, you could use that. Your /etc will be
renamed to /etc.old and you'll have to merge by hand (the etcupdate package
can be helpfull for this), but your other applications should be preserved.

But the method proposed by Lubomir Sedlacik will also work (it's the one I
usually apply when I want to minimise downtime, otherwise I test
sysinst's upgrade feature :)

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
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