Re: Upgrading a 90s laptop from 5.1 to 10 -- no FD or CDROM

[Brad Spencer <brad%anduin.eldar.org@localhost>]

joelp%sdf.org@localhost writes:

>> Any chance that BIOS can do netboot?  It's a long shot perhaps,
>> but I've owned several non-Intel machines of approximately that
>> vintage that I've successfully netbooted NetBSD onto, for
>> reasons similar to yours: the other possibilities required
>> no-longer-functioning hardware.
>>
>> 			regards, tom lane
>>
>
> Unfortunately, no PXE BIOS option.
>
> This was my first laptop and it ran Win98 originally (yep, scary). It
> wasn't long before I realized I could run a BSD on it.
>
> Maybe it's time to realize I can just enjoy a previous great release:
> NetBSD 5.1. I have compiler tools on it, so still useful.
>
> Thanks - Joel



I have done a couple of 4->7 updates in one leap without any problems.
Since you are on 5 that would be after the Schedular Activation change
to threads so if the newer kernel boots about 99% of userland will
likely just work (that wasn't the case with 4.x, as anything linked
against the older threads shared library would fail badly).  I have not
tried leaping to 9, but it should be pretty painless to just boot the
kernel and see.

I would place the 9.x kernel in root fs as something like /netbsd_9.x
and put the 9.x modules in /stand.  Then I would break into the boot
loader when it is booting and do something like "boot netbsd_9.x".  As
mentioned, some of the networking may not come up, but if the kernel is
bootable with your boot blocks and boot loader it has a fair chance of
working out for you.

If you want to proceed with the update, check dmesg and make sure that
your devices are probed and attached correctly.  A varient of this would
be to set rc_configured to NO in /etc/rc.conf before trying the 9.x
kernel as the boot will then stop in single user.  You can always do a
"mount -u /" later and edit /etc/rc.conf again to get multiuser up
(maybe after mounting /var and /usr if needed).  With the new kernel
running you can place the sets on a thumb drive (from another system)
and unpack them onto the target system (this can be tricky, as you may
be overwritting the tar command that you are using...  usually what I do
is make a copy of /rescue/tar somewhere else and use that copy.  That
would be statically linked and even a 5.x version should be able to
unpack the 9.x sets.  Just make sure you use something like '-xpf' when
you do it to get the permissions correct).  Then reboot again with the
new kernel to get the new userland running.  Then do postinstall (lots
of ways to run this one, but something like "postinstall -s
/thumb/etc.tar.xz -s /thumb/xetc.tar.xz -d /" is what you want) and then
reboot again with the new kernel (somewhere along the way, sway the
kernel names around so the 9.x kernel is /netbsd and the older one is
/netbsd_5.x).



One of the 4->7 updates I did was a very old laptop with a very small
hard drive in it that could not be upgraded as its physical size was not
standard.  It used a cardbus card for networking.  There was just enough
room for the newer kernel and modules in / but nothing else and no other
room for the sets anywhere.  I used a thumb drive to transport the sets
into the system.  Updated in one leap more or less...





-- 
Brad Spencer - brad%anduin.eldar.org@localhost - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org