Hi, Liam Proven wrote:
1. There are two different methods described. It does not clearly explain the differences, or give any recommendations about which to prefer or why. Speaking as a (former) professional technical author for enterprise Linux distributions among other things, when explaining different tools that do the same thing, it is_necessary_ to explain _why_ there are two and how to choose. 2. The `sysinst` method does not explain what it will upgrade. The tool offers choices but does not explain what the choices mean.
I wonder why you have issues... I upgraded many times.sysinst is a cool method and allows to work on a running system with a bit of reboots and luck and checking that the correct version is retrieved. It is a welcomed addition. It did not exist in older versions.
I just completed the upgrade on Sparc64 via serial console on a Workstation running headless, so not exactly "easy" yet upgrade worked fine.
There are two major steps: upgrade the core OS and upgrade packages, they are distinct since the core OS is functional without them. In NetBSD (and OpenBSD) you gave compilers, ssh and X11 (base) in the base OS. They fly together with the kernel.
These you can easily upgrade with an install kernel. You retrieve netbsd-INSTALL.gz for your platform or just use your standard boot media (CD, DVD, ISO, tape, whatever) and select "upgrade" instead of install. With a quick guided menu you select the hard disk, configure netowrk temporarily to that session and upgrade. The only important user input is to select the same setup you did before: usually full install with or without X11. You can "add" easily, but it is better not to remove. If you easily made a full install without X (for servers or other headless systems) or a full X11 install it is a quick option. Then the installer will fetch and run unattended, reboot and you are done. Thanks to backwards compatibility, everything will work especially if you did a minor release (e.g. 10.0 to 10.1) since full binary compatibility of packages is assured, but experience shows one hop or two of major release most often works!
Then you need to upgrade your packages. Depending on how you installed them it can go from rebuilding everything in pkgsrc (hard way) updating with pkg_add and a repository or using "pkgin update && pkgin upgrade" Have an eye on that. Depending on how it was installed or configured, ti might have the OS version coded in
Check /usr/pkg/etc/pkgin/repositories.conf so stay to 9.0 instead of 10.x I changed it to: https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/$arch/$osrelease/Allnote $osrelease here, this will keep you ready for the future and not bother with it again.
Riccardo