# Upgrading FreeBSD 9.0 --> best new release using XENHVM



## hnk (Mar 13, 2014)

I'm having a few problems with my VPS using Freebsd 9.0


```
uname -a
FreeBSD hostname 9.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE #0: Mon Feb 13 13:11:31 UTC 2012     root@fbsd.9x:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/XENHVM  amd64
```

When running `freebsd-upgrade` I get this:

```
freebsd-update -r 9.1-RELEASE upgrade
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 5 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 9.0-RELEASE from update5.freebsd.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Inspecting system... done.

WARNING: This system is running a "xenhvm" kernel, which is not a
kernel configuration distributed as part of FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE.
This kernel will not be updated: you MUST update the kernel manually
before running "/usr/sbin/freebsd-update install".

The following components of FreeBSD seem to be installed:
kernel/generic world/base

The following components of FreeBSD do not seem to be installed:
src/src world/doc world/games world/lib32

Does this look reasonable (y/n)?
```
How in the name of the lord do I update my kernel so it will boot and also have XEN support? I've downloaded ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/9.1-RELEASE/src.txz so my ~ and unpacked it to /root/usr/src and there built a new kernel, I have no idea if there is xensupport in it though? Or if thats even the right thing to do?

I have made a backup of my current XENHVM kernel

```
cp /usr/obj/usr/src/sys/XENHVM/ ~/XENHVM
```
At least I think that is my kernel.

The problems I have is that I cannot run `ventrilo_srv` I get this error:
./ventrilo_srv

```
ELF interpreter /usr/libexec/ld-elf.so.1 not found
fish: Jobb 1, ”./ventrilo_srv” avslutat av signal SIGABRT (Avbrott)
```
Sorry about the Swedish, I thought you were using an English locale.

And another problem is running my cacti poller:

```
su -m www /usr/local/bin/php /home/hank/www/cacti/poller.php
/usr/local/bin/php (rad 1): ELF
```

I think something has happened to PHP, my website is quite slow, but reinstalling and recompiling etc doesn't seem to make much difference, I also haven't found anything particular on the web as well.
But enough of that! I'll dig in to it a bit more when(hopefully) I'm on a newer version of FreeBSD!
---

I've seen some things on the web about upgrading while on a XEN vps:


> As a side-note for the future: it seems that starting from 10.0, the GENERIC kernel will contain XENHVM.


Perhaps moving on to FreeBSD 10 is something interesting.



> Yes, the GENERIC kernel uses adaX and the XENHVM kernel uses adX. It shouldn't be a problem to just change it in the fstab though. I've not yet had problems running 9.1 with XENHVM yet.
> I tried this both using the mountroot prompt when booting with an old fstab and a corrected fstab. In both cases the kernel is not able to mount the UFS volume.
> >> - I manually built a new 9.1 XENHVM kernel. Booting from that results in the message: "pudna: fpcurthread == curthread xx times" scrolling by. What can I do to fix that?



I've tried following this guide as much as possible, but I'm not on Rackspace, soooo.
https://topbarbee.com/node/107

I've moved from a Gentoo VPS to FreeBSD because of kernel and udev-problems and I've never looked back, perhaps until now. I'm not sure how much console-support I have from my VPS-host but I think it may work well if kernel panics on boot. I will backup my work. Perhaps creating a new VPS which is using 10.0 is an easier step but it will cost me some hard earned money which I want to spend on alcohol instead!


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## hnk (Mar 16, 2014)

So my VPS host has VMWare support now so I created a new Fbsd server and migrating to that one instead of upgrading the other 9.0 one.

So this thread can be closed.


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