Thanks for all the good answers. Just one final question. Do you think it is at all possible to do this update without rebooting? It would save time but I assume that this is impossible.
The reason I thinking of doing it this way is because I need to distribute the update on a bootable cd. I need a method that is as failsafe as it can be without any user-interaction (Except for turning the power switch). Thanks, Rickard. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Seaman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Rickard Dahlstrand" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2004 1:51 PM Subject: Re: automatic dump and restore over On Sun, Jan 11, 2004 at 12:00:12PM +0100, Rickard Dahlstrand wrote: > > > All the servers is installed with one partition for /, one for /var/. When I do > > the initial install I move the /etc to /var/etc and synlink /etc to point at > > /var/etc. This should make the / partition exactly the same on all the servers. > > If you move /etc like this, you'll make the machines so treated > unbootable. There's critical stuff in /etc that has to be in the root > partition for the boot process to be able to find it. > > > On the reference server (where I do all the upgrades) I then use dump to create a > > file from the / partition. This file is the zipped and moved to my laptop from > > installation on all the other servers. > > > > The laptop is then connected to the same network as the server that needs > > upgrading. The laptop is running DHCP, TFTP and NFS services. > > > > All servers are set to boot using PXE and once I reboot it the server boots an > > image from the laptop containing a picobsd dist with a modified startup script. > > > > This script automatically mounts the hard drive on the server and a directory on > > the laptop containing the dump-file from the reference server. Then it uses > > restore to write the dump-file over the / partition on the server. > > > > After the upgrade is complete I reboot the server without the DHCP server active > > and the server should boot using the new / partition. > > > > Can this work? I have read that dump/restore is the best solution for backing up > > disks. Could there be any problems using restore on a partition already allocated? > > It strikes me as a lot more complicated than the recommended method, > which is to designate one machine as a 'build box', where you build > all of the OS and kernels you need. You then NFS export /usr/src and > /usr/obj and mount them on the machine you want to update. Then you > can use 'make installkernel', 'make installworld' and 'mergemaster' to > do the update. Possibly with a few other steps here and there -- for > full instructions start with: > > http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/small-lan.html > > However, if you decide to stick with your first idea, then I'd make > a few changes: > > i) Copy the contents of /etc to your /var as a backup. Leave the > original /etc in place on the root partition. If you're going > to be doing this sort of thing regularly, then you can set up a > cron(8) job: the net/rsync port will let you do the copies very > efficiently. > > ii) Before you rewrite your root partition, you should run newfs(8) > on it to blank it. restore(8) can overwrite a populated > partition, but it works best given an empty filesystem. > > iii) After you've restored your example root partition, copy back > the contents of /etc. Note that this will wipe out any updates > to files within /etc which came as part of the upgrade. > mergemaster(8) will help you fix things up, or you can be > selective about what contents of /etc you actually keep backed > up > > -- > Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks > Savill Way > PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow > Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK _______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
