Re: Getting ready for NetBSD 1.5

[Ignatios Souvatzis <is%beverly.kleinbus.org@localhost>]

On Sat, Dec 02, 2000 at 11:13:25PM -0500, John Klos wrote:

> Now that it appears that NetBSD 1.5 is going to be "officially" released
> soon, I'd like to ask a couple of questions about moving from 1.4.2 to
> 1.5.
> 
> My goal is to have as little downtime as possible. Therefore, I'd like to
> know if this is possible:
> 
> (1) I d/l the complete 1.5 sources (onto my 1.4.2 system)
> (2) I do a "make build" in the /usr/src directory
> (3) I build a 1.5 kernel and replace the 1.4.2 kernel
> (4) I do a "make install" in the /usr/src/directory
> (5) I reboot.
> 
> Are there any problems I may have with doing the above?

Yes. normally, you need to:

1) download sources.
2) compile the new kernel first:
  a) cd /usr/src/share/mk; make install
  b) cd /usr/src; make includes
  c) cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/config; make clean && make dependall && make install
  d) make a kernel configuration including COMPAT_14
  e) compile that kernel and boot from it
3) for NetBSD/1.4.3 and NetBSD-1.5, you need also to rebuild the compiler now
  (You might or might not to do this before 2c; I didn't try)

  a) cd gnu/usr.bin/egcs; make dependall && make install)

4) and then, and not earlier, you can do a make build from the toplevel.
  a) cd /usr/src; make build

This still won't install the new etc/rc.d stuff; you'd have to do this
manually and add your individual configuration. This is why I think that

> What's the best way to do this with the least amount of downtime? I'd
> like to keep downtime down to, at most, 15 minutes or less.

Use a binary upgrade, then. And check first, that you'll have enough space
in the root filesystem for 1.5... it needs a lot more (read INSTALL.TXT etc.
for the exact numbers). 15 minutes won't be enough, however.

So my advice is:

if you really can't afford, say, one or two hours to properly upgrade to 1.5,
get used to its configuration system, and configure it,

do a binary upgrade (or maybe source upgrade as above, including compiler
rebuilding) to 1.4.3 to get rid off the old bugs.

Regards,
        -is