Re: how to upgrade from NetBSD 3.1 to 4 ?

[Gary Thorpe <gathorpe79%yahoo.com@localhost>]

--- Philip <subs%christiantena.net@localhost> wrote:

> I read the documentation on the netbsd.org site and only suggests one
> upgrade method, that is to
> boot from a NetBSD 4 CD and upgrade that way.
> The problem is that my broadband firewall / web server / mail server
> is running NetBSD 3.1 and has
> no keyboard, no monitor, and no CDROM drive. It lives in the cupboard
> under my stairs. I only access
> it using ssh.
> Is there no other way? like put a netbsd 4 kernel on the drive and
> reboot it or something
> Booting from CD is going to cause quite a lot of hassle.
> 
> thanks for any help, Philip

Well, I remember seeing something in the installation guides  about
putting the installer files on unused partitions or on NFS. Looking at
http://www.netbsd.org/docs/guide/en/chap-exinst.html#exinst-choose-media,
it says you can put the installation files in these places as well as
HTTP, local directory, etc. but I honestly have not tried these
methods. 

However, all you would need to do once you have such a location set up
is boot the INSTALL kernel (from the hard disk presumably or maybe even
netboot). So your options appear to be: FTP, HTTP, NFS, unmounted
partition, local directory. The first 3 depend on the INSTALL kernel
being able to set up your NIC/network successfully to some degree. The
last two would require you being careful not to erase the installation
tar archives (e.g. an unmounted partition not in use, a local directory
on a file system you don't plan to newfs/erase/reuse).

Hope that was helpful.


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