A while ago I asked what the current thought was on the safety of doing
upgrades
vs. fresh installs, and how long to expect an upgrade from DU 4.0b to DU 4.0d
to take on a dual-cpu 4100.
Comments are as follows:
*... until 4.0b-4.0d always did installs, but now they work fine. Only reason
you will not be able to upgrade is if you have root
partitions which are only 64meg (ie, the old default size).... but even
then, if you have the disks, doing a disk-disk dump/restore can be faster.
4.0D now defines the root partition at 128 meg.
- less than 2 hrs to do upgrade on 4100 -
* ... depends on how many option sets are installed. Since some option sets
are not upgradedable you spend a lot of time removing them, sometimes tricky
in finding just which set, and then re-installing them once the upgrade is
finished.
- time to install depends on media distribution kit -
* V4.0B to V4.0D is a piece of cake. Most layered products are unaffected.
You would need to remove Open3D or MME, but you probably don't have them on
the system.
* Upgrade replaces sendmail, so if you update it on your own you'll have to
re-install it.
- upgrade takes 1-2 hours -
===========================================================================
One source recommended copying the kit from the CD to a disk prior to the
update, and doing the upgrade from disk. *THIS DOES NOT WORK - DO NOT DO IT*!!!
I copied the cd to /var, and started the upgrade simultaneously on 2 systems
(big mistake number two) and both upgrades crashed on the base subset, after
deleting almost all system links and a number of system binaries, leaving the
systems in an unrecoverable state, so I had to do fresh installs (or restore
and upgrade from CD). I called DEC phone support and the person there said,
in essence, "oh yeah, that doesn't work. We don't know why not, but you
shouldn't do it!" Wish I'd know that before I tried it!
On the two systems I upgraded from CD, the upgrade went smoothly, took about
1.5
hours per system. Problem was, I was upgrading 4 systems with one CD, so the
sequential approach took me into the wee hours of the morning. It'd be nice
if you *could* do it by loading it to hard disk, but no such luck. sigh...
--
Judith Reed
jreed_at_appliedtheory.com
(315) 453-2912 x335
Received on Tue Jun 02 1998 - 22:05:16 NZST