[CDBUG-talk] Recreating a 10.2 machine

[Fongaboo]

I ended up getting this advice and it worked great:

> Either use the packages from the DVD or wipe out /usr/ports and unpack 
> ports.txz from the distribution (it will be in /usr/freebsd-dist in the 
> ISO image, tar xf foo.iso usr/freebsd-dist/ports.txz will get it for 
> you, then tar xf usr/freebsd-dist/ports.txz -C / to unpack it).

I had all the versions of the ports that corresponded with the 10.2 
release.


On Wed, 19 Apr 2017, Garance A Drosehn wrote:

> On 18 Apr 2017, at 11:30, Fongaboo wrote:
>
>>> Trying to recreate a 10.2 machine? (self.freebsd)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> We've since been given some steps to take with our particular software 
>>> that will allow us to otherwise upgrade things. But I still don't want to 
>>> try it first on the production machine. So I've created an Amazon EC2 
>>> instance with a 10.2 AMI, and am attempting to install everything the same 
>>> as we have on the production machine, best I can... So that I can then 
>>> attempt the upgrade in this safe space first.
>>> 
>>> Problem is, even though I've installed FreeBSD 10.2 on this instance, it 
>>> seems to be using newer ports in the ports collection. For this to be an 
>>> effective endeavor, I really need to install the versions of the software 
>>> that would have installed in 2015/2016. Dependencies are failing when I 
>>> try to make install, so it's an actual problem.
>
> I don't know the specifics of working with Amazon EC2.
>
> When working on my own machines, I've done minimal installs on some new 
> machine, and then created a bunch of spare partitions which mirror the 
> partitions on my existing machine.  I then use dump/restore to duplicate 
> entire partitions from the existing machine to the new one.
>
> I then fix up /etc/fstab in the root partition on the new machine to match 
> the locations of all the copied partitions on that new machine.  I probably 
> fix up a few other config files, such as /etc/rc.conf (to get a different IP 
> address, and set a different hostname).  I then reboot the new machine into 
> the copy of '/' which was duplicated from the existing machine.
>
> I'm afraid I don't have the time to write up more details, but hopefully that 
> provides the basic idea.
>
> -- 
> Garance Alistair Drosehn                =     drosih at rpi.edu
> Senior Systems Programmer               or   gad at FreeBSD.org
> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute;             Troy, NY;  USA
>