Re: Upgrading questions
Thank you everyone for the useful information. I think that this is actually the most I have ever received on any list when I have asked a (to me) fairly complex question. I have now been armed with insightful, and meaningful information that I can move forward with. I'll be doing 2 things. 1. I have a second box (that is much older and therefore in my mind not a good choice to replace with), but I will install 3.6 there, and then run through the upgrade process on it, from 3.7 to 3.8 and finally 3.9 2. When step 1 completes, then I'll start the process on my main box. That way I will know exactly what to expect. Thanks again, --Rob - Eirik Goransson / Rob Baldassano Member, Barony of Endless Hills; House Odlahorde; Viking & All around Good Egg ; VROC #5029 (Tigger) come visit http://www.dracowolf.com Want to be your own boss? Learn how on Yahoo! Small Business.
Re: Upgrading questions
On 7/4/06, Rob Baldassano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: a former co-worker says "NO don't do that, never trust upgrades". I tend to disagree. Are they a windows user? -Nick
Re: Upgrading questions
Rob Baldassano wrote: I have been running OpenBSD 3.6 since the day it came out, and am now in need up going to 3.9 The question is: What upgrade issues have folks run into? Very few, myself. I've got at least one machine running which started out with OpenBSD 3.1, and has been remotely upgraded to 3.9, and will be to 4.0 (unless I replace it for other reasons, and as it is a P1, there is a lot of merit to doing so) (and yes, the upgrade over the 3.3 -> 3.4 ELF conversion was darned scary, but done without a trip to the box). I'm running it on a DELL desktop. you realize that doesn't help much, right? However, I've found few desktop Dell machines that have difficulty with OpenBSD, and can't think of any reason why a machine that ran 3.6 fine would do anything other than run 3.9 at least as well (and likely, better). BTW, some of the reasons I want to upgrade: ... you missed the important reasons. A biggie being that 3.6 is no longer supported by security patches. You do need to upgrade. Whether that means start over and reload from scratch, or follow the upgrade process, that's for you to decide, but you need to stop running 3.6 and start running 3.9. So... Any hints, pitfalls, suggestions that people have run into before? in general is it safe to do an Upgrade? a former co-worker says "NO don't do that, never trust upgrades". I tend to disagree. On most systems, upgrades work Just Fine. On the other hand...you haven't upgraded this machine in three releases, so you have a bit of work to do (three separate upgrade processes). Some thoughts, mostly without conclusions: * If your disk layout is perfect, or at least sufficient, upgrade, don't reload. If the disk layout turned out to be "wrong", good time to fix it with a reload, rather than upgrade. (warning: your /usr partition will grow by a huge amount for 3.9, 'specially if you have to build -stable from source on this machine). * New applications may need a new disk layout. On the other hand, you may not know what that disk layout should be until after you are testing. * Disk is cheap. Buying a new disk, install fresh and test on that. If things go right, you are done, if they go wrong, you can easily revert to your existing config until you figure out what went wrong. * Used computers that run OpenBSD well for many apps are also cheap...you could just swap out the whole machine...downtime measured in minutes, and a fully tested replacement at that (and very fast reversion if your testing sucks)... Granted, you mentioned Java...so this may not apply. * Look at why you have rejected the advice about keeping your machine up-to-date with a supported version of OpenBSD (recommended upgrades every six months, no less frequently than annually). Fix that. * If you have installed a lot of software without the packages mechanism, you may have "stuff" all over the place that you have no idea how to get rid of. * In your case, you will end up dumping all your installed packages due to the 3.6->3.7 compiler upgrade. Not that this is bad, your installed packages usually need to be updated more critically than the base system anyway, but something to be aware of. It does give you a chance to say, "THIS is what I want on the system, and not that". As for your co-worker's advice about not doing upgrades, he's wrong. Of course, there is some risk of doing anything to a running system, but there is also a risk to doing nothing. You need to have the systems in place to contain the risk of doing the upgrades, so that when there is a security hole which turns out to be important, you can IMMEDIATELY and without issue implement a practiced and understood process, not a "oh, sh*t, now what do we do?". The upgrade process must be part of your plans. Nick.
Re: Upgrading questions
Joachim Schipper [2006-07-04, 15:13:35]: > Several Java implementations are in ports; Sun Java works on i386 only, > I believe. kurt has enabled jdk 1.5 on amd64 as well some time ago (-current only). -- steven Disclaimer: http://www.kuleuven.be/cwis/email_disclaimer.htm
Re: Upgrading questions
Joachim Schipper wrote: Several Java implementations are in ports; Sun Java works on i386 only, I believe. Sun Java 1.5 works on amd64 in -current. /Sigfred
Re: Upgrading questions
On Tue, Jul 04, 2006 at 12:34:53AM -0700, Rob Baldassano wrote: > I have been running OpenBSD 3.6 since the day it came out, and am now in need > up going to 3.9 > > The question is: > What upgrade issues have folks run into? > I'm running it on a DELL desktop. > > BTW, some of the reasons I want to upgrade: > 1. Support for PHP in the Apache mods. > 2. Increased security > 3. webmail > 4. I REALLY want to get the Xwindows environment working (never did on 3.6) > 5. I'm looking to expand some functionality and want to include things like: > PHP, MySQL, Apache, a PHP based store front, Java - if it's available yet, > and general "client side functionality" Several Java implementations are in ports; Sun Java works on i386 only, I believe. > 6. So that I can deploy my current windows box as a backup server (It sucks > low memory and CPU for windows, but I know OpenBSD will run fine on it > -- I hope). > > > So... Any hints, pitfalls, suggestions that people have run into > before? in general is it safe to do an Upgrade? a former co-worker > says "NO don't do that, never trust upgrades". I tend to disagree. Upgrading and installing OpenBSD are usually quite painless. Making a mistake occasionally is a given, but since you should have backups anyway... Also, the only thing that you are likely to do wrong and is hard to recover from is untarring etc39.tgz over your current configuration. (That, and forgetting the 'p' flag to tar, but that's easily solved by booting from removable media.) However, if you upgrade by this much, you will most likely have to rethink and possibly rewrite at least a couple of configuration files. Joachim
Re: Upgrading questions
On 7/4/06, mike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Tue, 4 Jul 2006 00:34:53 -0700 (PDT) Rob Baldassano wrote: > I have been running OpenBSD 3.6 since the day it came out, and am now > in need up going to 3.9 why don't you start here: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade39.html Please be careful with this piece of advice. From the OP's present release (3.6) to the latest release (3.9), it is probably easier to perform a full backup of your system and install a fresh system onto the drive. Upgrades are supported between releases immediately following it (i.e. 3.6 to 3.7; 3.7 to 3.8, 3.8 to 3.9, etc.) and not in larger steps. The instructions explicitly state so. From 3.6, your upgrade path either runs through 3.7, 3.8 towards 3.9 or through a full backup, towards 3.9 and a restore of your user data. As you should make backups anyway (also for upgrades) and practice your restore procedures regularly, I recommend doing a fresh install. Cheers, Rogier -- If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.
Re: Upgrading questions
On Tue, 4 Jul 2006 00:34:53 -0700 (PDT) Rob Baldassano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have been running OpenBSD 3.6 since the day it came out, and am now > in need up going to 3.9 > > The question is: > What upgrade issues have folks run into? > I'm running it on a DELL desktop. > > BTW, some of the reasons I want to upgrade: > 1. Support for PHP in the Apache mods. > 2. Increased security > 3. webmail > 4. I REALLY want to get the Xwindows environment working (never did > on 3.6) 5. I'm looking to expand some functionality and want to > include things like: PHP, MySQL, Apache, a PHP based store front, > Java - if it's available yet, and general "client side functionality" > 6. So that I can deploy my current windows box as a backup server (It > sucks low memory and CPU for windows, but I know OpenBSD will > run fine on it -- I hope). > > > So... Any hints, pitfalls, suggestions that people have run into > before? in general is it safe to do an Upgrade? a former co-worker > says "NO don't do that, never trust upgrades". I tend to disagree. > > Thanks, > --Rob > > > - > > Eirik Goransson / Rob Baldassano > Member, Barony of Endless Hills; > House Odlahorde; > Viking & All around Good Egg ; > VROC #5029 (Tigger) > come visit http://www.dracowolf.com > Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs.Try it free. > > why don't you start here: http://www.openbsd.org/faq/upgrade39.html
