WARNING: The information in this page is grossly out-dated. I will leave the pages up in case they might be of some use.

NOTE: I have not used NetBSD for more than 2 years! I have not used MacOS or Mac hardware in more than three years. If you have questions, you are probably better off e-mailing the NetBSD mailing lists rather than me.

Note:This document was originally written by me. Colin Wood reworked and augmented it greatly. With 1.3, it became a part of the main installation documents. However, I felt it might be useful to also have it as a separate document. So I have put it into HTML and provide it here. I have also added a few more things based on my experiences upgrading my Centris 650 from 1.2E to 1.3. Please read the disclaimer.

If you are installing for the first time, or plan to start from scratch, see Larry Kollar's Installation Guide.

Upgrading a previously-installed NetBSD System

The upgrade to NetBSD 1.3 is a binary upgrade; it would be prohibitive to make users upgrade by compiling and installing the 1.3 sources, and it would be very difficult to even compile a set of instructions that allowed them to do so. Because of the many changes to the system, it is difficult and impractical to upgrade by recompiling from the sources and installing.

No automated upgrade procedure exists for upgrading to release 1.3.2 for the NetBSD/mac68k architecture. The current procedure is essentially to perform a new install from scratch. It is hoped that there will be a good upgrade procedure for future releases. Please feel free to volunteer to help replace these installation tools.

The following steps outline the current upgrade procedure. These steps should help ease the upgrade process. Please read these instructions carefully and completely before proceeding:

1. Since upgrading involves replacing the kernel and most of the system binaries, it has the potential to cause data loss. You are strongly advised to BACK UP ANY IMPORTANT DATA ON YOUR DISK, whether on the NetBSD partition or on another operating system's partition, before beginning the upgrade process. Although the upgrade should not damage your filesystem(s) in any way, you never know what may happen.

2. Download the distribution sets you want from the "mac68k/binary/sets" subdirectory of the NetBSD 1.3 distribution. You will need the base set and the kernel at a minimum. Be sure to download the files in binary mode. If you will be upgrading from within NetBSD, make sure that you place the distribution sets on a filesystem you will be able to reach from single-user mode.

3. The first thing that I recommend you do, is to prepare your /etc files. You will probably want to replace some of your system configuration files, or incorporate some of the changes in the new versions into yours. To do so, as root, do the following:

   cd /tmp
   tar -zxvpf /path/to/etc.tgz
   cd etc

   Now, in the /tmp/etc directory, make any changes to the new files that you will need. You might want to compare files in your current /etc directory with the new files in your /tmp/etc directory. In particular, the files that you will need to change are:

   • The first file to pay attention to is /tmp/etc/rc.conf. This file did not exist under NetBSD 1.2, but it is used to configure the rc scripts under NetBSD 1.3.x. Edit the file to your preferences, making sure that you change the line that says:

     rc_configured=NO

     to read:

     rc_configured=YES

     This will enable all of the options you have configured in /tmp/etc/rc.conf.

   • The next important item to take note of is the new networking configuration files. If you currently have an /etc/hostname.xxN file (fill in the xx with either ae or sn and the X with a number), you will need to convert it into an /tmp/etc/ifconfig.xxN file before networking automatically works. The format for the new file is simply the arguments which you would give to ifconfig on the command line. The following is an example of the minimal ifconfig.xxN file: inet hostname.domain.dom netmask 0xffffff00 Read the ifconfig(8) man page for more details on arguments to ifconfig. Be sure to set

     auto_ifconfig=YES

     in /tmp/etc/rc.conf to ensure that your network interfaces will be brought up automatically on boot.

   • Copy the /etc/fstab file to /tmp/etc/fstab. Several of the options given to many of the file systems have changed, and some of the file systems have changed names. IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT YOU CHANGE ANY INSTANCES OF "ufs" IN /tmp/etc/fstab TO "ffs". To find out more about different filesystem options, read the man page for the associated mount command (e.g. mount_mfs(8) for MFS filesystems; note: FFS type filesystems are documented in the mount(8) man page). Later in the install process, you may also need to correct /etc/fstab for a shift in the partition numbering scheme. See step (5) below for more details, if you have problems mounting your partitions under 1.3.

   • Other files that you might want to copy from /etc into /tmp/etc include: /etc/hosts, /etc/passwd, /etc/master.passwd, /etc/defaultdomain, /etc/localtime, /etc/myname, /etc/mygate

4. Once you have edited all the files in /tmp/etc, you will make a new tarfile by doing the following:

   cd ..
   tar cvf etc-new.tar etc
   mv etc-new.tar /path/to/other/tarfiles

   Now, just to be extra safe, I also recommend making a backup of your current /etc directory. To do so, you do the following:

   cd /
   tar cvf etc-old.tar etc
   mv etc-old.tar /path/to/other/tarfiles

5. Install the 1.3 kernel. You may either use the Installer utility (included in the "installation/misc" subdirectory) or install from within NetBSD (the latter is recommended for speed reasons). If you choose the former, proceed as you normally would. If you choose to install from within NetBSD, then boot (or shutdown) into single-user mode and do the following:

   cd /
   tar -zxvpf /path/to/kern.tgz

   There is no need to backup your old kernel explicitly since it will be incapable of running many of the newer binaries you are about to install (unless, of course, you have a backup copy of your older binaries and want to revert to them for some reason). However, you might want to keep a backup if you are upgrading from within NetBSD just in case the newer kernel has trouble booting your machine.

6. If you are installing using the Installer, skip to step 7. Otherwise, reboot into NetBSD in single-user mode. Run 'fsck -f' and then mount all local partitions read/write. Usually 'mount -a -t nonfs' should do the trick, but if you have several partitions on the same disk, take note of the fact that a change in partition numbering may have moved a few of your partitions around. You can do a 'disklabel sdX' (where X is a drive on which you have NetBSD partitions) to see how the partitions are currently layed out. It is likely that a partition has shifted into the 'sdXd' or 'sdXe' slots, slots that often were not available under previous releases of NetBSD. If this is the case, you will need to manually mount your root partition (via 'mount -w /') and edit your /etc/fstab file to reflect the new partition layout. Unless you are familiar with 'ex' or 'ed', the easiest way to fix your /etc/fstab file is probably to simply do a 'cat > /etc/fstab' and type in the corrected file in its entirety.

7. Install the distribution sets. Keep in mind that the NetBSD 1.3 distribution takes up a considerably larger amount of disk space than did the 1.2 or 1.2.1 distributions. If you are using the Installer, proceed normally (remember that you will need to mount non-root partitions by hand using the MiniShell before installing). If you are installing from within NetBSD, do the following:

   cd /
   tar --unlink -zxvpf /path/to/base.tgz

   It is crucial that you use the '--unlink' flag when invoking tar or you will fail to correctly overwrite some files. Keep in mind that there is no going back once you have installed the base set short of a complete re-install of an earlier distribution. Continue with the appropriate command line for each of the other sets you wish to install except for the etc set.

8. Now, we will install the new etc tarfile that we prepared in step 4. If you are in the Installer, quit it and boot into NetBSD in single-user mode. From there, do the following:

   cd /
   tar --unlink -zxvpf /path/to/etc.tgz
   tar --unlink -zxvpf /path/to/etc-new.tgz

   In doing so, you first install the "official" etc file which also includes some files that go into /var and /dev as well. Then, you install the /etc files that you edited in step 4 above. Again, by using the --unlink option, we are overwriting the distribution versions, with your edited copies. If you run into problems, you can always restore your old /etc files by doing:

   tar --unlink -zxvpf /path/to/etc-old.tgz

   Finally, it is a good idea to re-make your devices again for 1.3. To do this, you should:

   cd /dev
   sh MAKEDEV all

9. A number of binaries have changed their locations from NetBSD 1.2.1 to NetBSD 1.3 (most of these have moved from /sbin to /usr/sbin). A few binaries have been removed. It is probably best if you scan the modification dates of the files in the /sbin directory. If there are files in the directory which have newer counterparts in the /usr/sbin directory, it is a very good idea to remove the older files (you will probably run into difficulties later if you choose not to do this). You should also check the /sbin, /bin, /usr/bin/, and /usr/sbin directories for old binaries that are no longer part of the NetBSD distribution and delete them as well. In general, all the files in a particular distribution should have similar modification dates, so looking at these is a good way of determining a file's age.

10. Run 'fsck -f' to make sure that your filesystem is still consistent. If fsck reports any errors, fix them by answering 'y' to its suggested solutions (note: if there are a large number of errors, you may wish to stop and run 'fsck -fy' to automatically answer "yes" instead).

11. Exit from single-user mode and it should continue to boot into multi-user mode.

Note:This document was originally written by me. Colin Wood reworked and augmented it greatly. With 1.3, it became a part of the main installation documents. However, I felt it might be useful to also have it as a separate document. So I have put it into HTML and provide it here. I have also added a few more things based on my experiences upgrading my Centris 650 from 1.2E to 1.3. Please read the disclaimer.

Back to my Mark's MacBSD How-To Index.

Last updated, 98-09-19.

URL for this page: http://www2.giganet.net/~mark/NetBSD/howtos/upgrade-howto.html