# upgraded to 9-current, wanted 8-release



## cbrace (Feb 26, 2010)

Hi all,

I have just upgraded my server from 7-stable, but things didn't go as planned.

I upgraded the source tree by means of *cvsup supfile-stable*, followed by *make buildword*, *make kernel*, *install buildworld*, etc.

When I rebooted the system, various things didn't work, such as the LAN NIC -- complaints from the *timeout watchdog* (???). It appeared I am running 9 current now, when I my intention to upgrade to 8-release.

My first thought was to restore a dump I had made of my root partition several days ago. I copied it on to a USB stick, then booted the LiveFS CD. 

However, the *mount* command said it couldn't handle MSDOSFS. This command works fine booting from the HD: *mount -t msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /mnt/usbdisk* but not from the LiveFS CD. 

My next idea was to "upgrade" the system back to 8-release with sysconfig from the distribution CD using sysconfig, but I don't know whether this is possible, so I haven't tried that yet. 

Another option would be rerunning *cvsup* _correctly configured_ to update the source tree to 8-release, then recompiling everything. 

Any thoughts?

One more thing: I have _Absolute FreeBSD_, ed 2 in front of me, and following the chapter on upgrading, I ran *mergemaster -iU*. According to the text, this is only supposed to prompt files that I have edited, but when I ran it it seemed to go through dozens and dozens of files in ../rc.d etc that I have never touched. After a half hour or so, I gave up.

How do you all handle merging changes in /etc?

Thanks.


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## cbrace (Feb 26, 2010)

sorry, sysconfig --> sysinstall
I don't see an edit button anywhere...


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## DutchDaemon (Feb 26, 2010)

Other than salvaging your data and configs and starting from scratch, re-running csup and the world/kernel cycle may be your only option, provided the system is functioning properly now (i.e. kernel and world are of the same version, and working without errors).

Backup all important data anyway.

And if you think mergemaster will be a breeze when you jump to *two major versions* ahread, you're quite the optimist. Everything has changed in the meantime.


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## cbrace (Feb 27, 2010)

Well, I ended up refetching the source with cvsup, and recompiling kernel and world. Everything is working again.



			
				DutchDaemon said:
			
		

> And if you think mergemaster will be a breeze when you jump to *two major versions* ahread, you're quite the optimist. Everything has changed in the meantime.



Why should it be a big deal? In /etc/ and /usr/local/etc on my server there are only a handful of .conf files I have edited. 

As I said above, according to the book, mergemaster with the *iU* options is supposed to automatically install new files (-i) and automatically update (-U) files which I haven't edited. I must be missing something... maybe you need to run mergemaster before updating everything to create a database to compare files against or something. I haven't much experience with it.


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## tkjacobsen (Feb 27, 2010)

I've had really bad experiences with mergemaster -Ui. The U option somehow decided that I hadn't changed /etc/passwd and /etc/passwd.master so I lost all my users.

Now I use mergemaster -iF. From the manual:

```
-i 	 Automatically install any files that do not exist in the des-
		 tination directory.

     -F 	 If the files differ only by VCS Id ($FreeBSD) install the new
		 file.
```

EDIT:
BTW, anyone know how -U determines if a file has been updated or not?


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