# Upgrade 7.4 to 9.1



## Uniballer (Nov 19, 2012)

I'm seriously contemplating trying a source upgrade on a small, slow machine running 7.4.  If I build 9.1 world and kernel on a fast machine, and nc over tar'ed images of /usr/src and /usr/obj built on another machine, and do a `# make installkernel KERNCONF=mumble` will I be able to boot it in single user mode so I can `# make installworld`?  I can `# make distribution` on the target machine. Then I will only need to add 2 user accounts and a few changes to /etc/rc.conf, and install a few ports.

What do you think?


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## SirDice (Nov 19, 2012)

No need to copy the files, just NFS mount /usr/src and /usr/obj (can be done read-only). You can then do the installworld/installkernel bit. Skip the booting to single user mode.


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## Uniballer (Nov 19, 2012)

Alas, the 7.4 machine was built without NFS support.

I was concerned that if I attempted the `# make installworld` without having booted the 9.1 kernel first that at some point I would be trying to run a program built for 9.1 on the 7.4 kernel, and I'm not at all sure that will work.  Will it?


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## SirDice (Nov 19, 2012)

It won't. Only very rarely do you specifically need to boot the new kernel prior to an installworld. It will be mentioned in /usr/src/UPDATING if that's the case.

In the past 15 years I can remember it happened once, when they moved from UFS1 to UFS2. Not booting the new kernel before installworld resulted in a non-booting system.


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## jb_fvwm2 (Nov 19, 2012)

```
mount -t ufs -o union /dev/da0 /usr  # or unionfs; /da0 having [FILE]/src[/FILE] and [FILE]/obj[/FILE]
```
Not sure of typo's, but I did a v6 > v9 upgrade (a thread is in the forums...) but it was very problematic (v9 installs checked for stuff present only in v8, maybe, I had
to do probably twenty workarounds, and it eventually completed, but took all day...)


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## phoenix (Nov 19, 2012)

It's generally recommended, and safer/saner, to do a stepwise upgrade:

upgrade to latest 7.x release
upgrade to 8.0
upgrade to latest 8.x release
upgrade to 9.0
upgrade to latest 9.x release
And then upgrade/reinstall your ports.


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## Uniballer (Nov 19, 2012)

phoenix said:
			
		

> It's generally recommended, and safer/saner, to do a stepwise upgrade:
> 
> upgrade to latest 7.x release
> upgrade to 8.0
> ...


I know, but life is too short if it's not really needed.

It's up and working with the old ports.  Straight from 7.4 to 9.1-RC3 (I svn'ed releng/9.1 so next week or so it will be RELEASE-9.1).  The biggest problem so far was that the application had to be told about the change in serial port names (e.g. /dev/cuad0 became /dev/cuau0, the old /dev/cuau0 is now /dev/cuau2, etc.).

Now I have to check/reconfigure sendmail.  Then I should rebuild the ports on my fast machine and bring over packages...


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