The FreeBSD Diary

I was in the process of upgrading a friend's box from 4.0-RELEASE to 4.1-STABLE.  That's when I thought it might be a good idea to record how long it takes to cvsup and build everything.  Hopefully, some of your will find this useful.

There is another article on how to upgrade your box, but that will be updated after this article is completed.  The upgrade instructions have recently changed.  Once I have confirmed that these instructions work for me, I'll refresh that article.

For what it's worth, I'm using a script to do this upgrade.  It's much easier than typing out the commands by hand.   NOTE: this script will be updated to the latest recommendations once this article is finished and I've tested the changes for myself.

Timecounter "i8254"  frequency 1193182 Hz
CPU: Cyrix 486DX2 (486-class CPU)
  Origin = "CyrixInstead"  DIR=0x321b  Stepping=3  Revision=2
real memory  = 41943040 (40960K bytes)

That's not very fast.

/usr/src contains about 268MB of source code.   That might help you to figure out how long your cvsup will take.

When I took my cvsup file from /usr/share/examples/cvsup/standard-supfile I forgot to set my tag file properly.  As a result, I upgraded to -current, not -stable.  I should have changed the following line:

*default release=cvs tag=.

to:

*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_4

As a result of my mistake, I decided to reinstall 4.0-RELEASE, and do the cvsup again (for the record, this cvsup took 2hrs and 5 minues).

Here is the cvsup command I used:

cvsup -g -z -L2 /root/make/standard-supfile 2>&1 | tee
    $(LOGTO)/standard-cvs.$(DATE);

When using the script, this would be:

make update

Here is the command I used:

cd /usr/src; \
make buildworld 2>&1 | tee $(LOGTO)/bw.$(DATE);

When using the script, this would be:

make build

Here is the command I used:

cd /usr/src; \
make installworld 2>&1 | tee $(LOGTO)/iw.$(DATE);

When using the script, this would be:

make install

The installworld took about 40 minutes.

(cd /usr/src && \
    make buildkernel   KERNEL=$(MYKERNEL) && \
    make installkernel KERNEL=$(MYKERNEL)) \
    2>&1 | tee $(LOGTO)/kernel.$(DATE);

When using the script, this would be:

make kernel

The kernel build took about 2 hours and 40 minutes.

/usr/sbin/mergemaster -w 120 -t $(LOGTO)/root.$(DATE) \
                  2>&1 | tee $(LOGTO)/merge.$(DATE);

When using the script, this would be:

make merge

The merge took ten minutes, however, this is a manual process so your time may vary.   I've done a few merges in my time but your first merge might take you 30 minutes or so.

kerneloldstyle:
#
# use this method only if you are not building world
#
	(cd /sys/i386/conf && \
	config $(MYKERNEL) && \
	cd ../../compile/$(MYKERNEL) && \
	make depend && \
	make && \
	make install && \
	make clean) 2>&1 | tee $(LOGTO)/kernel.$(DATE);

kernel:
#
# if you are using FreeBSD 4.1-stable or later, use these instructions
# NOTE: this method should only be used when building world.
#       if you use it otherwise, you will get an error.
#       you should use "make kerneloldstyle" instead
#
	(cd /usr/src && \
	make buildkernel   KERNEL=$(MYKERNEL) && \
	make installkernel KERNEL=$(MYKERNEL)) \
        2>&1 | tee $(LOGTO)/kernel.$(DATE);

Both of the above methods are document in the Building and Installing a Custom Kernel of the FreeBSD Hanbook.