On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, Alex de Kruijff wrote:
On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 03:01:36AM +0100, Denis Fortin wrote:
Greetings,
I've Google'd a bit, but I cannot find a "survival guide to upgrading a FreeBSD system remotely".
The Handbook's procedure is excellent (cvsup to the RELENG branch and then make'ing world), but it requires going into single user mode and using the console, two things which may not be possible in the context of a server sitting unattended in a hosting center 10000 kilometers away.
Has anyone written a quick guide on issues that can arise in this kind of situation? (For instance, one the the issues is that one might end up with a bad kernel: have people devised a way for the boot code to interact with "reboot -k xxx" to revert to the default kernel after an unsucessful boot, or after a specific time?)
Although its not recommended to do this, it can be done. It basicaly comes down to following the manual (without rebooting into single usermode) and be very very carefull. Read everything you need to read, run every command you need to run and have someone sitting there in case it goes wrong.
Note: I've never done this on a busy system.
That is the really important thing: there shouldn't be any other traffic on the system. Do everything step by step and keep a logfile to check if everything worked o.k. . Do something like # make buildworld > logfile & In case your connection breaks, buildworld will go on and you can check everything when it is up again. With # tail -f logfile you can check the advance anytime you whish.
Uli.
alternativly, check out the screen utility. it keeps tty's alive on disconnects (among other things)
/usr/ports/misc/screen
~j
-- "Yesterday upon the stair I saw a man who wasn't there, he wasn't there again today, oh how i wish he'd go away"
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