Evidence of earlier Upgrade

[thefronny]

I have a 6.3 box which runs with no issues at all so of course I want to upgrade it to 6.4. But I can't remember if the 6.3 was a fresh install (likely) or Upgrade run on a 6.2 install. Files or something must be left behind to indicate status because Install will tell me if the target system can or can not use Upgrade because it has or has not already been Upgraded once. What might that be? Other than just running Update and seeing what it says.

[jggimi]

...Install will tell me if the target system can or can not use Upgrade...

I've never seen this.

You can upgrade continuously, there is no harm in upgrading from older releases as long as you upgrade in sequence, and make all manual changes as recommended in each Upgrade Guide. So you could upgrade from 5.9 -> 6.0 -> 6.1 -> 6.2 -> 6.4 -> 6.5 -> 6.6.....

If you are curious, inspect your /usr/lib/libc.so.* files.

• At 6.3-release, libc was at 92.3.
• At 6.2-release, libc was at 90.0
• At 6.1-release, libc was at 89.3
• At 6.0-release, libc was at 88.0

This laptop I'm replying from began with a fresh install at 6.0. I have a couple of servers in production which began life as installs of 5.7. Unfortunately, I don't have any systems still in use that have been continuously upgraded from when I began with 3.3, but if I still had the hardware, they'd probably still have old libraries.

[thefronny]

Originally Posted by jggimi

I've never seen this.

You can upgrade continuously, there is no harm in upgrading from older releases as long as you upgrade in sequence, and make all manual changes as recommended in each Upgrade Guide. So you could upgrade from 5.9 -> 6.0 -> 6.1 -> 6.2 -> 6.4 -> 6.5 -> 6.6.....

If you are curious, inspect your /usr/lib/libc.so.* files.

• At 6.3-release, libc was at 92.3.
• At 6.2-release, libc was at 90.0
• At 6.1-release, libc was at 89.3
• At 6.0-release, libc was at 88.0

This laptop I'm replying from began with a fresh install at 6.0. I have a couple of servers in production which began life as installs of 5.7. Unfortunately, I don't have any systems still in use that have been continuously upgraded from when I began with 3.3, but if I still had the hardware, they'd probably still have old libraries.

Thanks! Certainly won't say you're wrong. I'll backtrack here and say perhaps I saw output saying it was not recommended that I Upgrade a second time, not that I can not. I have some CDs of consecutive older releases and an empty box, I'll do a test today while it snows...

[thefronny]

Originally Posted by thefronny

Thanks! Certainly won't say you're wrong. I'll backtrack here and say perhaps I saw output saying it was not recommended that I Upgrade a second time, not that I can not. I have some CDs of consecutive older releases and an empty box, I'll do a test today while it snows...

Well, dang. I just did: I. 6.0 -> U. 6.1 -> U. 6.2 -> U. 6.3 with no issues at all, and no "warnings". lol. I know I didn't imagine it but who knows where I saw it. You should have made a bet.

Thanks, the test was fun.

[jggimi]

I wasn't there. Guess 1: perhaps you saw a failure to mount a valid root filesystem. Guess 2: perhaps you jumped releases and were missing the new release's signify(1) public key.

The install-or-upgrade script can be found in the source tree, in two parts. The main functions are in /usr/src/distrib/miniroot/install.sh and the architecture dependent components are in /usr/src/distrib/<arch>/common/install.md.