# Easy upgrade?



## demonfire (Jun 24, 2011)

I have built FreeBSD 8.2 from the ground up on my own box, and while it took some work, it was not that hard. My workstation at my job is currently running FreeBSD 7.2, and I want to upgrade it to 8.0 (the last 'official' workstation build in the office). I have the 8.0 custom kernel available to me.... can I just swap the kernel out and reboot, then re-port some packages, or do I need to rebuild everything?  If I need to rebuild, is there a simple command that will use the custom kernel and upgrade what is needed, or will I need to basically start from scratch?

I am kind of on my own here as my place of business has migrated most workstations, and all future workstation builds to Ubuntu (which I am resisting as long as I can).

My last option, which would still be a pain, would be to get one of the few workers using the 8.0 build to install a second drive in their box, then copy the build over to the second drive for me to use in replacing my drive.


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## SirDice (Jun 27, 2011)

FreeBSD, unlike Linux, isn't just a kernel. To upgrade you will have to install a new kernel _and_ a new world. After that you will have to rebuild _all_ installed ports. Instead of rebuilding all your ports you can also install misc/compat7x but I recommend rebuilding everything.

Handbook: Chapter 24 Updating and Upgrading FreeBSD


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