On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 11:34:49AM +0200, Mathias Haas wrote: > Hello! My wifes' company had a break-in during the night today and they > stole ALL the computers. They have their backup on an external firewire > disk. > At home I have a FreeBSD 4.6.2 setup - but I believe that 4.6.2 doesn't > have firewire support, is this correct? > Is there any way to add firewire support to the kernel or do I have to > upgrade to a later version of FreeBSD? > If so, what are the odds for a successfull upgrade from 4.6.2 to 4.10 ? > A fresh reinstall would take a lot of time since the 4.6.2 server runs a > ton of applications.
Yikes. Yes, FireWire support was first introduced in FreeBSD 5.0 and
then later MFC'd to 4.x: see
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=fwohci&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+4.10-stable&format=html
A 4.6.2 to 4.10 upgrade should be do-able by the make
{build,install}{world,kernel} process as spelt out in
/usr/src/UPDATING. Just use cvsup(1) to grab the latest RELENG_4 or
RELENG_4_10 sources and follow the instructions. There's plenty in
the Handbook about doing an upgrade like that:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/synching.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/makeworld.html
That should get you a kernel+base system update without screwing up
all of the other software you've got installed. Although it is
impossible to be completely certain about that. If the machine you
intend to do this to is a production system, then I'd advise you not
to, but instead to hunt around for a reasonably cheap new machine with
FireWire capability and install there instead.
In any case, get good backups of your 4.6.2 box before doing anything
else to that machine.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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