# Upgrade from 7.3-STABLE to 8.0-RELEASE



## haroldclement (May 11, 2010)

Good day,

I am running FreeBSD 7.3-STABLE and I want to upgrade to FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE.

Could anyone help me out here by giving me a few tips on the correct approach? or isn't this possible?

Thanks in advance.

Harold


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## wblock@ (May 11, 2010)

There are several ways to do that.  They all start with a full backup of all your data including config files in /boot, /etc, and /usr/local/etc, home dirs, everything.  If possible, it's often better and quicker to install a new copy of FreeBSD-8 to a new hard drive.  Then you can copy over data and config files from the old drive.

The various ways to upgrade are in the Handbook chapter on updating and upgrading.


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## haroldclement (May 11, 2010)

Thank you for your response.

I am new to FreeBSD so appologies if my questions are a bit dumb 

Following up on your advice I tried using the freebsd-update command to update my system.

[CMD=]freebsd-update -r 8.0-RELEASE upgrade[/CMD]

However it fails to fetch the metadata signature.


```
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 3 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 7.3-STABLE from update4.freebsd.org... failed.
Fetching metadata signature for 7.3-STABLE from update5.freebsd.org... failed.
Fetching metadata signature for 7.3-STABLE from update2.freebsd.org... failed.
No mirrors remaining, giving up.
```

Any ideas what could be wrong with the system?

In the process I updated my ports tree with:

[CMD=""]portsnap fetch update[/CMD]

I can also succesfully resolve the update4.freebsd.org from the system.

Thanks in advance for your help in this.

Harold


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## gilinko (May 11, 2010)

freebsd-update doesn't work with the -STABLE or -CURRENT branches, only the -RELEASE branches. And that's why it doesn't find any meta signatures. My suggestion would be either a complete reinstall of 8.0-RELEASE(once you have backed up important data) or recompile your 7.3-STABLE as a 7.3-RELEASE and then use freebsd-update for the move to 8.0-RELEASE.

Either way. Do the backup, then choose you path. A fresh installation is probably the simplest way.


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## haroldclement (May 11, 2010)

Thanks for clearing that up for me. It's running on one of the ESX hosts so i'll go for the re-install as suggested.

Thanks for your time and support.

Harold


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