Converting FBSD installation to DFBSD?

[James Frazer]

Just a curious related question here:

Is mergemaster always necessary?  I haven't used it much because when I 
did use it it either confused me or broke things.

Plus reading through a whole bunch of diffs didn't appeal to me.  I 
didn't really understand what it was asking me to do.  It definately 
wasn't automatic (like the rest of the build/install process) and mostly 
turned into mindless button pressing (just to get through to the end), 
because I don't really have 2 hours available to sit around reading diffs.

Or maybe I did something painfully wrong?

It was a disaster nonetheless,

--James



Matthew Dillon wrote:
:I have a machine with a little-used FBSD-4.9 installation which I
:wouldn't mind sacrificing to try out DFBSD.
:
:So, I was wondering if I could just cvsup new DFBSD sources to
:replace the FBSD sources and proceed to compile the new system
:that way.
:
:Will a FBSD kernel run executables which are compiled for BFBSD,
:I suppose is the obvious question.  Will the installworld
:die in the middle when some critical bit of userland gets
:suddenly replaced?
    You should be able to do a buildworld, buildkernel, installkernel,
    installworld sequence from a FreeBSD-4.x machine.  The installworld
    should be able to proceed through without blowing up.  But if you
    do a partial installworld you can end up in a no-win situation because
    you won't be able to rebuild the world with a FreeBSD machine and
    DragonFly includes.  Once the world is installed I would also recommend
    running the 'upgrade' target, which will clean up the RC files, a good
    chunk (but not all) of the stale binaries left over from FBsd, and 
    most of /etc, before doing mergemaster.

    The safest route is to burn the DragonFly CD ISO we have available on
    our site and to blow away your disk.  Even if you decide to try to 
    install over FreeBSD instead of blowing away the disk having a
    DragonFly CD lying around can be extremely useful if you get stuck.

    Also, if you burn a DFly CD, you can boot it without messing with your
    hard drive to make sure that DragonFly supports your machine's hardware.
					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at xxxxxxxxxxxxx>