Mike Long <mikel@shore.net> writes:

>Date: Wed, 5 Nov 1997 14:45:04 +0200
>From: Jukka Marin <jmarin@pyy.jmp.fi>

>>Is it necessary to reformat and/or repartition hard disks?  Is it necessary
>>to install new boot loaders?  If so, on which ports?  I'm talking about
>>upgrading from 1.2[1].

>No and no on i386. 

True, but note that 

 (a)  on i386, sysinst will install new bootblocks for you anyway.
      I don't know about the install sh scripts, I guess they do, since
      sysinst follows the sh scripts in such things.

 (b)  The new i386 boot blocks boot gzipped kernels and can easily be
      set up to netboot. AFAIK the original 1.2 bootblocks cannot.

> Other ports' mileage may vary.

Yes, they do.  On the pmax port, for example, users with a 16MByte
root (the standard for 1.2) will have to re-partition their root to 32
Mbytes (the standard for snapshots for the last year, approximately,
and for 1.3).  The contents of /sbin has grown considerably with
support for new filesystems like ext2fs, and the pmax binaries have
bloated noticeably by moving to ELF.

I don't know off-hand of other ports that need such a drastic change,
though.