# Upgrading question



## lm8 (Jul 16, 2010)

I'm currently running FreeBSD 7.2 on an old, low resource laptop.  I added a lot of programs as packages, but I've also built several from scratch (some not even in ports).  The only connection to the machine is basically sneaker-net (DVD or USB 1.0).  Is there an easy way to update to the latest version of FreeBSD or should I just leave it running the version I have?  If there is an easy way to update via sneaker-net, could someone please point me to some documentation or instructions?

Thanks.


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## roddierod (Jul 16, 2010)

If the machine is running fine and if a newer version of FreeBSD yields no significant benefits, why upgrade? If you spent all that time building a machine and it ain't broke - don't fix it.


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## vivek (Jul 16, 2010)

Yes, you can upgrade it using standard tools. Newer software means more features and more bugs too  so it is upto you.


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## fronclynne (Jul 16, 2010)

*I should note that this is only if you're willing to upgrade from source* (my preferred method)

the most recent 8.1 RC ( ftp://ftp5.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/8.1/ ) should have the most recent sources inside $CDROOT/8.1-RC2/src/ (or some variation on that).

You can also just dl everything from ftp://ftp5.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/8.1-RC2/src/ to some directory, copy it to a disk, move it, mount it, & set DESTDIR and run install.sh.

(use whatever mirror is closest and fastest)


The cdrom itself can also be used to directly upgrade, there's a menu option on sysinstall for it, I believe.


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## lm8 (Jul 18, 2010)

Thanks for the information.  I'm thinking of giving the upgrade from cdrom option a try after I backup or document any changes I made.  Sounds like the easiest option for now.  Thanks for the info on updating from source.  I'll check into that as well.  

The main reason I wanted to update the laptop to a later version is that I'm hoping to install FreeBSD to my desktop computer as well and would like to share programs I build across the two systems.  Figured it would be better to install the latest release to my desktop.


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