Hi Hagen, Hagen Volpers wrote on Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 12:38:27AM +0100:
> I have a question regarding openbsd and partitions. > I want to have more than one obsd installation on one harddrive. At least on i386, no problem whatsoever. Just define one /root partition per installation and have the right /etc/fstab in each one to mount the right partitions. Usually, you will also define one /usr and one /var per installation, but depending on what you do, you can also put everything into the respective /root partition. Usually, /tmp and /home can be common for all. In the bootloader, you can easily specify which root partition and which kernel to boot right now. For some time, i used a build machine with four parallel installations: Previous release, most recent release, -current and one scratch area for testing work that might break things really badly. I stopped doing such stunts when i switched my production servers from -stable to -current. It reduced the overall workload needed for maintenance. > The idea behind that question ist to be able to install a newer > release in parallel, chroot into it, compile stuff, install packages > etc and boot into that partition when it's done. Uh, that often won't work. When you chroot into it, you still have the wrong kernel running. Compiling stuff might or might not work, so according to Murphy, it probably won't when it's most pressing. Better boot one version at a time and work with that. When working with OpenBSD, you get no points for excessive cleverness. Just do things in standard and simple ways, even if that may seem dull and boring on first sight, but it typically work best. > I want to avoid onside reinstallations If that's all, just use the standard upgrade process twice a year. It's painless. > (and I don't want to have several old versions of libs, in short, > the default patch-way). Why? Where's the problem with old libs? Old libs are good. When you update ports, there are often some few that need special handling and are perhaps not available right away, in particular those you had to compile yourself (if any). When you keep the old libs around, (nearly) all old ports continue working until you come around to updating them. When i am forced to reinstall a machine from scratch, i nearly always have some kind of partial service interruption because one of the ports is not available yet and what i have won't work with the newest libs. It's mostly harmless, but it's a nuisance and fixing it is a waste of time. > I don't know if that is a good idea, perhaps there is a much > easier way. Your suggestions guarantees lots of additional work for very little gain, if any. The gain will definitely not be in correctness, stability or security. Not even in time or simplicity. Yours, Ingo
