updating freeBSD

I want to go from FreeBSD 4.8 to 4.9... Im pretty new and would like to know the steps on how to do this.

The handbook is the best source of info for upgrading:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.IS...tting-edge.html

When I started with FreeBSD, I found their versioning scheme a little confusing (although after understanding it, I can't think of a better way to solve it).
So another hint: You want RELENG_4_9. And you don't want to put that into your ports-sup file, ports are independent of the release.

hth,
M.

This is what I did.
1. Install cvsup. Best to do this with pkg_add or /stand/sysinstall, rather than ports, because the ports will first compile a modula4 compiler and it'll take a while. Post here if you're having trouble installing cvsup.

2. Make a cvsup config file. You can find sample cvsup config files installed in /usr/share/examples/cvsup. I keep all my cvsup config files in /usr/local/etc/cvsup/. These are the config files I use to update source and ports.


3. Run cvsup to update your source.
cvsup -g -L 2 /usr/local/etc/cvsup/cvsupsrc

4. Edit /etc/make.conf (copy from /etc/defaults/make.conf if needed) to make it build to your requirements.

5. You can drop the machine into single-user mode at this point, though I've never had problems compiling in multiuser mode. Navigate to /usr/src

6. make buildworld
This will take a while to finish

7. make buildkernel
Optionally, you can specify a custom kernel name here with: make buildkernel KERNCONF=kernelname
if not specified, it assumes KERNCONF=GENERIC

8. make installkernel
This installs the new kernel to the system

9. reboot
Make sure your system comes up with the new kernel.

10. make installworld
This installs the new userland tools

11. mergemaster
This shows you all the differences in the config files. You can use it to fix all the config files. When going from 4.8-4.9 there are going to be a lot of changes. mergemaster will also run MAKEDEV for you automatically, if it needs to.

12. reboot
The system will now come back up with the new config files.

Thanks for your help ! Im going to give it a shot. Let you know how it turns out.

Everything worked great ! Untill I got to the mergemaster step... I did that and then makedev did its thing, it asked me if I wanted to merge a bunch of the config files... which I said yes.... and then I rebooted it and now it locks up when loading exim :P... oh well... any suggestions ?

The merge function in mergemaster is a recipe for disaster - I usually either allow mergemaster to completely overwrite a file or do nothing at all (leave it for later).

When you say 'locks up' - have you tried pressing 'ctrl-c'?

This usually skips the current local rc script that's being loaded - you can then try and work out what the problem is in a shell.

Sounds like you might have overwritten some key files here like /etc/hosts or /etc/master.passwd etc. In general, I let mergemaster overwrite everything except for:
/etc/passwd
/etc/hosts
/etc/groups
/etc/hosts
/etc/master.passwd