Re: sysupgrade - has anybody tried it

[Andy Ruhl <acruhl%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 11:18 AM, herbert langhans 
<w3%langhans.com.pl@localhost> wrote:
>
> Hi List,
> cowardly I procrastinate updating my laptop to 6.0. There is no bootable
> device built in (IBM Thinkpad X31), I have installed NetBSD by taking
> the harddisk out, put it into a PC and ran the installation from CD.
>
> Anyway - I see sysupgrade can do the trick without all the hassle. My
> question is - has somebody sucessfully updated from 5.1.2 to 6.0? Any
> traps there? I read in the NetBSD-Doku that sysupgrade is still
> 'undergoing field testing' by August 2012 ...

If your goal is to upgrade the machine without a bootable device that
has the install media, this is easily done by downloading an install
kernel and all the install sets onto your current hard drive. Put the
install sets into a known folder, /install for example. Then name the
install kernel something easy, I use netbsdi.

At reboot, interrupt the bootloader and manually point to the install
kernel something like this:

boot hd0a:netbsdi

(As mentioned in another response, the newer bootloaders should be
able to boot whatever kernel you want to use)

Then you can install as you would from a CD or floppy. The only
difference is you point to the install files in /install instead of
getting them from the CD or an ftp site or something.

Is this what you're looking for? Or were you really wanting to use sysupgrade?

Andy