David O'Brien wrote:
> > 1) Soft Updates enabled on a root partition.
> >
> > This comes back to the old "you can't turn SU
> > on or off, except via tunefs". So even if you
> > boot via CDROM, it's too late, if the CDROM
> > kernel supports SU, since it's already on, and
> > you can't substitute an async mount.
>
> Why not? The install kernel does not have SOFTUPDATES enabled.
> Can one not mount a parition aync if the softupdates flag was set via
> tunefs in the past [and the running kernel does not support them]?
No. The tunefs flag takes precedence. Look at the FFS
code. I've submitted patches once in the past, which basically
converted the "update" of mounts into an unmount+remount,
but that was shot down as a "bad idea".
The problem is that you have to wait for the clock to drain,
since the device you use might be something like a vn, also
on a soft updates partition. It gets messy.
The initial mount, even if taken care of, will not
get me where I need to be, as upgrades are more frequent
than initial installs. I expect that the rest of the
FreeBSD community has this experience as well (this
bodes ill for the growth of FreeBSD adoption, but that
is a -advocacy topic).
> > 2) Most of my upgrades are over a network, not
> > booting off of CDROM.
>
> How are you running sysinstall? I do not know what you
> mean by "over the network". To me that means you have
> made the two boot floppy set and used that -- the "network"
> part is where you are getting your distribution sets from.
> In this case, you *are* running sysinstal as init. Perhaps
> I do not fully understand how you are doing this.
I have no floppy. I have no CDROM. I have no video
card or keyboard, so I can't invoke the Intel FXP BIOS
etherboot code. I have only a serial console, a network
connection, and a hard disk.
--------------------------------------------------------
Terry's magic embedded system upgrade procedure, Mark I
To be run at the console, logged in as root ...
--------------------------------------------------------
echo "This crap should be accessible on the CD, but isn't"
ftp machine.installed.from.cdrom
cd /stand
lcd /tmp
get sysinstall
cd /dev
get MAKEDEV
get MAKEDEV.local
quit
mount nfs.server.with.cdrom:/cdrom /mnt
cd /tmp
echo "Must use a fricking matching sysinstall..."
chmod 755 sysinstall
./sysinstall
upgrade
local disk = /mnt
force the S.O.B. to install /src...
exit
echo "non-boot sysinstall 'can't be bothered' with this..."
cp MAKEDEV /dev
cp MAKEDEV.local /dev
cp sysinstall /stand/sysinstall
cd /dev
sh MAKEDEV all
echo "What were they thinking when they changes this?!?"
cd /etc
cat >> pam.conf
# this is crap for ssh because ssh won't work otherwise
sshd ...
sshd ...
sshd ...
^D
sync
sync
sync
reboot
--------------------------------------------------------
Make sense now? It even works for "downgrading" your
-CURRENT system to -STABLE, if you want to not crash
all the time, and realize the errors of your ways in
having installed -CURRENT...
> > 3) The default in 4.3-RELEASE is to have the IDE
> > write caching off.
>
> If you submit a patch to add the proper entries to
> /boot/loader.conf in the MFSROOT image, I'd commit it.
> This would ensure the installation process always runs
> with write cashing on.
I wasn't sure that this was processed correctly from
the MFS image. I will look at doing a patch; but it
won't help my own situation, since I don't really boot
the thing in order to upgrade.
-- Terry
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