I had two machines (ELC, IPX) running 1.4.1 or 1.4.2, and just
   upgraded them to 1.5_BETA2.  This didn't require a total reinstall - I
		    ^^^^^^^^^
   just used the upgrade option (traditional install script), and it went
   smoothly.  Note that /etc/rc* has changed and you'll need to
   hand-merge that - but it wasn't hard.
   
   However, a lot of my packages broke (eg cvs, missing libraries), and I
   pkg_deleted and rebuilt them all.  I think the issue with packages is
   that while the old a.out libc is present and a.out binaries get run
   fine, a number of packages use libraries that didn't end up with the
   a.out versions still there.  So, if you can get ELF packages for the
   things you need and have those on-disk before the upgrade, the process
   isn't painful.  I did my second system this way after the poor little
   ELC spent a few days compiling cvs, perl5, emacs, etc., and the
   upgrade/pkg_delete/pkg_add went fine.


your problem is that the sparc "upgrade" for 1.5_BETA2 did *not* properly
stash away your old a.out libs somewhere useful, but simply overwrite them
with the new ELF ones.  this is fixed in 1.5, but i haven't tried it myself.




.mrg.