On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 13:54:26 -0800
rgf <r8@socal.rr.com> wrote:

> Currently running NetBSD i386 1.6.1
> I've downloaded the 2.0 sets to my /usr partition:
> 	/usr/downloads/NetBSD20/*
> 
> I had trouble the last time I upgraded (1.5.2 -> 1.6.1) using sysinst. 
> Namely, I had trouble finding the downloaded sets on my disk from within 
> sysinst (mounting the partition and getting the path right from within 
> sysinst).  I was thinking of upgrading to 2.0 manually like we used to 
> do in NetBSD-mac68k, by copying over the kernel, rebooting, then 
> extracting all of the sets manually with tar or pax.
> 
> Will this work, or will there be problems?  The NetBSD INSTALL document 
> says that upgrading using sysinst will replace the boot blocks. 
> Obviously this will be skipped if I extract manually.

You can boot a generic 2.0 kernel and then update userland. You probably 
don't to extract the etc.tgz set though as it will overwrite things in /etc. 
One thing to keep in mind though, is that even though the kernel may have 
compatability with 1.6 compiled in, many thinsg is /sbin and /usr/sbin
may not work perfectly, or at all, until userland and the kernel are in 
sync. This is especially important with things like ipfilter, which will
very likely not be filtering during that part of the install. 

I usually do a "cd /usr/src; ./build.sh -D $DESTDIR build" and then use
rsync -avH to copy the new stuff in /, followed by an /etc/postinstall fix
+ etcupdate from pkgsrc. Since I only do a "build" of userland, nothing in 
/etc that should be preserved gets overwritten. I find that building from 
src is preferable since you'll likely want to use cvs to track the release 
branch anyway so that you can more easily fix security problems, etc...

I'm sure what I do isn't the best method, but it works fine for me. Your
mileage may vary.

-- 
Harry Waddell
Caravan Electronic Publishing
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