This chapter describes the binary upgrade of a NetBSD system. To do the upgrade, you must have the boot floppy set or any other boot medium available. You must also have at least the base and kern distribution sets available (or download them via FTP). Finally, you must have sufficient disk space available to install the new binaries. Since files already installed on the system are overwritten in place, you only need additional free space for files which were not previously installed or to account for growth of the sets between releases. If you have a few megabytes free on each of your root (/) and /usr partitions, you should have enough space.

The upgrade procedure using the sysinst tool is similar to an installation, but without the hard disk partitioning. sysinst will attempt to merge the settings stored in your /etc directory with the new version of NetBSD. Getting the distribution sets is done in the same manner as in the installation procedure. Also, some sanity checks are done, i.e. file systems are checked before unpacking the sets.

Before doing an upgrade it is essential to read the release information and upgrading notes in one of the INSTALL.* files: this is the official description of the upgrade procedure, with platform specific information and important details. It can be found in the root directory of the NetBSD release (on the install CD or on the FTP server)

It is advisable to print the INSTALL.* document out. It is available in various formats, usually .txt, .ps, .more and .html

The following section provides a detailed overview about the binary upgrade process. Most of the following sysinst dialogs are similar to them of the installation process. More verbose descriptions and explanations of the dialogs are available in Chapter 3, Example installation.

After selecting the installation language and the keyboard type, the main menu appears. Choosing option “b: Upgrade NetBSD on a hard disk” will start the the upgrade process (Figure 4.1, “Starting the upgrade”)

The dialog in Figure 4.2, “Continuing the upgrade” will request for confirmation to continue with the upgrade. At this point nothing has been changed yet. The upgrade can still be cancelled. A good moment to think about a emergency plan: is the backup on-hand, will restoring work?

After choosing to continue with “Yes”, the next dialog will ask to specify the hard disk with the NetBSD system that shall be upgraded (Figure 4.3, “Choosing the hard drive”). If more than one disk is available a list of the disks will be displayed.

The system used for the example has only one hard disk available: “wd0”.

The following dialog (Figure 4.4, “Choosing the distribution filesets”) will provide a menu to choose the installation type. Available options are “Full installation”, “Minimal installation” or “Custom installation”.

The next sysinst dialog will ask how much information should be provided during the extraction of the distribution filesets. (Figure 4.5, “Upgrade process - verbosity level”)

Sysinst will then perform a check of the file system to ensure the integrity of the file system (Figure 4.6, “File system check”)

The next step will be to choose which type of bootblocks shall be installed (Figure 4.7, “Choosing bootblocks”).

The following dialog Figure 4.8, “Install medium” will ask for the install method of choice and provides a menu about the possible options. The install medium contains the new NetBSD distribution filesets. Depending on the previously chosen install method, the dialogs will then demand for more information, to configure devices, directories, (etc.). The details can be found in Section 3.10, “Choosing the installation media”.

Sysinst will now definitely upgrade NetBSD: it installs the distribution filesets and runs the postinst script to clean up various things. If no problems occur, the upgrade will be finished at this point. The dialog in Figure 4.9, “Upgrade completed” gives the advise to follow the concluding instructions in the INSTALL.* document - this is essential!

After passing the dialog that confirms the upgrade, sysinst will return to the main menu. The install medium (floppy, CD, disk) needs to be removed. Choosing “Reboot the computer” will boot the upgraded version of NetBSD.