Steve,
I'll jump in as I've done this a number of times -- with reasonable
success. I usually start with a stable release of the OS. say version
3, and then grab the current source and upgrade it according to some
instructions that I ran across on ONLamp.com. The only caveat that I
remember in following those directions is that the kernel is actually
in a subdirectory of the complile location called obj -- other than
that the instruction have worked for me as recent as a couple of days
ago updating an already 'current' system.

Of course, you can always have the bad luck of grabbing current
source at an incomplete time, but waiting a bit and re-running the cvs
update will fix that. Here's the ONLamp link:

http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/04/10/Big_Scary_Daemons.html

Hope this helps.

Bob Lee
Quoting Steve Brown <steve@daedilus.org>:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> I recall carrying out an upgrade to get a system running a stable branch
> of version 3 about a year ago, but had a few problems that took some time
> to iron out (broken / incorrect system links etc).  I know these problems 
> probably occurred from not knowing what I was doing really.
> 
> I've had a scan read of the NetBSD Guide on netbsd.org for instructions on 
> the best way to upgrade a running system to another version of NetBSD. 
> >From what I can tell, there's plenty of information on getting sources, 
> compiling and so on, just not much about upgrading a running system once 
> you've done the above (although I could have just missed it).
> 
> The system concerned is the only NetBSD machine available to me at any 
> kind of decent speed, and is running entirely on a Raidframe based RAID 1 
> array.
> 
> If anyone could advise me on the best way to carry out this upgrade, I 
> will then be able to run NetBSD 4 BETA2 on my current system with a view 
> to giving some feedback.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Steve

-- 
Robert Lee  PGP: D3EE2268 pgp.mit.edu
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