[CDBUG-talk] Recreating a 10.2 machine

[Garance A Drosehn]

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