Upgrade "forever"? - PC-BSD Forums

David30 · #1 08-09-2012, 01:30 PM

Hi

I don't know much about FreeBSD and PC-BSD, but I did read that you can upgrade the FreeBSD OS and apps without breaking things? Is this true? If so, it would be great to keep upgrading the OS and apps on the same computer, until that computer dies or until that computer becomes too old to run newer apps at an acceptable speed.

Surely the above would be better than having to re-install the entire OS and apps just to receive the latest bugfixes? This problem is a *big* frustration with Ubuntu. You have to upgrade the entire Ubuntu OS to get the latest fixes and apps, but then upgrading Ubuntu often breaks things, like hardware drivers!

Upgrading Windows will break things, but the user can stick with an older version and still receive the latest apps and fixes for years. Some people still use Windows XP and that's supported until 2014.

What do you think about being able to upgrade the OS without breaking apps and hardware drivers? Can it be done or could it be done in future?

kmoore134 · #2 08-09-2012, 01:58 PM

This is something we are doing with the 9.x series. It is now possible
to "upgrade" from 9.0 -> 9.1 and so forth, via an online update. This
preserves all your apps / settings

David30 · #3 08-10-2012, 11:15 AM

Sounds good.

Will it be possible to upgrade from 9.x to 10, then from 10.x to 11 etc. literally forever?

kmoore134 · #4 08-10-2012, 01:05 PM

I've not confirmed 9.x -> 10.x upgrades yet, but I think it may be
doable. The only potential issue may be PBIs needing to be re-installed
with their 10.x versions, but we'll find out more about that as 10.x
gets closer

David30 · #5 08-10-2012, 07:54 PM

Thank you.

I'll be more than happy to beta test. I'm already beta testing PC-BSD 9.1 and it just works.

sg1efc · #6 08-15-2012, 02:14 AM

Originally Posted by kmoore134

I've not confirmed 9.x -> 10.x upgrades yet, but I think it may be
doable. The only potential issue may be PBIs needing to be re-installed
with their 10.x versions, but we'll find out more about that as 10.x
gets closer

That would be spectacularly amazing, even if PBIs need to be reinstalled.

Well, I'm already spectacularly amazed by PC-BSD actually.

David30 · #7 08-15-2012, 11:25 AM

Am I correct in saying that apps installed from PBIs have their own directories, and the apps dependencies are kept in the same directories as the apps? If true, that could mean that upgrading the OS would not affect the apps? I read the Wikipedia page on PC-BSD and discovered this, in the section "package management":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-BSD

What about device drivers? Would upgrading FreeBSD/PC-BSD keep the device drivers the same?

I'm asking these questions because countless number of times I've seen things break when I've upgraded Windows and Ubuntu! Think of the poor newcomer when this happens!

I'm amazed by PC-BSD too.

kmoore134 · #8 08-15-2012, 12:45 PM

The PBIs *should* still run on the newer major version, be it 10.x, or
11.x, since we include the backwards compat libraries by default.
However, there may be a few that wont, like VirtualBox, which needs a
kernel module specifically for that version of FreeBSD. I may simply put
something in place which warns the user to update any PBIs which don't
function properly after the upgrade.

As for drivers, those will be replaced / upgraded when moving to a newer
version. As long as there is no regressions, you shouldn't see any issues.

David30 · #9 08-15-2012, 02:53 PM

Wow! I can see you put plenty of time and energy into making PC-BSD work perfectly.

Putting something in place to warn the user about having to upgrade apps would be brilliant. Could it be possible to (optionally) upgrade the affected apps while also upgrading PC-BSD?

To test for possible driver regressions, could the user be presented with a simple testing GUI, during the upgrade, to check that all hardware and power saving works?

Cheers.

rvc · #10 08-15-2012, 05:27 PM

Thanks for the update on this wonderful news !
i know i am totally a newbie for pcbsd and i am sure to be sticking with this for years to come with newer versions and updates...
i was also reading on jail stuff... keeping that in mind, can the updates be warned and diverted to be tested within a jail to test and then export to actual install ? i dont know if i am using correct terminology but your concept of jail is awesome and can be extended for such updates too...

just my view on this amazing concept....