On Oct 1, 10:52pm, Greg A. Woods wrote:
}
} [long parable deleted]

     Personally for upgrades, I ignore sysinst.  I find it much easier
to do it by hand.  There are two processes I use depending on whether
or not I'm working on the first machine of a given architecture.  For
the first machine the process:

- download everything I need
- install generic kernel
- install all the sets (including source sets, but excluding etc)
- reboot
- build custom kernel and install it
- reboot
- done

For subsequent machines, the process is:

- make custom kernel on first machine, and download it
- download or NFS mount disk with everything I need
- install custom kernel
- install all the sets (excluding etc)
- reboot
- done

I have used the procedure for subsequent machine on remote machines
successfully.

     The above procedures work nicely for minor release upgrades.
Major release upgrades are somewhat more complex, since you have to
prebuild a new /etc ahead of time, and you will need to reboot between
installing the kernel and sets.  With the new rc.conf, hopefully this
process will be much simplified.  There were some major changes in the
contents of /etc between 1.2 and 1.3, but the changes for 1.3 seem to
have streamlined things, so I would hope that 1.4 won't have many
changes.  Of course, with 1.4 we have pkg_sets, which would require
more work to manually unpack then the current tarballs.  This could
prove interesting when it comes to upgrading remote systems.

}-- End of excerpt from Greg A. Woods