hi!

Right , about one year ago i decided to set up a web server at home and choose to try FreeBsd. Installation went perfect and i'm actually pretty happy with my webserver cause it never crash (really fiew people pass by ...) and even lot's of sudden power supply failure, the system still reboot and always work s fine.

So, it's one year that this machine run but i never had to install new programs. Today, i felt like doing so by installing a proftp server.
I am a debian user and i looked for some synced packages database and a networked binary install which resolve dependencies.

However, while using sysinstall to connect to a ftp repository, it returns "WARNING, can't find the '4.10-RELEASE' distribution on this server...."
It seems the 4.10 is not supported anymore. However, while reading the upgrading directives, it says it is not recommended to cross upgrade....

Do we have to simply reinstall the whole system to upgrade to a new release?
i guess not.

On sysinstall, there is a ipgrade menu, but it's not really clear. It seems the system doesn't knows which packages are installed and it ask me to select packages groups and so on....

I just would like to be able to continue installing programs, and not reinstalling from scratch.
Can i do a binary update to realease 5? at least to 4.11?

G

You can to 4.11 but not to 5.x as that is not "safe." I am sure it is possible but I could never recommend it.

You can download the boot disks for 4.11 or one of the stable 4.x images (if you can find one) and do the update from the normal install program.

Or you could grab the newest sources and rebuild the whole system to 4.11 with all the latest security patches (probably my recommendation).

the machine that runs freebsd is a P2. i currentely have about 1GO binaries. It would take days before it compiles from sources! I won't play the purist onto that one.

However, the upgrade from another release boot disk sounds a good idea. But will this procedure update all the packages and only the packages i have installed?
Actually, when i went to the sysinstall application and try the upgrade menu, it seems the system could not stat which packages i have currently installed. Like, it asked me which group of package to upgrade/install.... I just need to upgrade my current packages and fix dependencies. nothing more (1GO binaries is already enough).

i don't think it will upgrade packages what you you can do is
use the ports system
install:
cvsup or cvusp-without-gui
update your ports collection
install portupgrade
then update all ports & packages with portupgrade