[comp.sys.next] upgrading to 2.1 the hard way

dwatola@NEXTASY2.EECS.WSU.EDU (David Watola) (05/16/91)

does anyone know:
is it possible to upgrade from 2.0 to 2.1 without having the "upgrade kit?"
i have a friend who just bought a new nextstation with the 2.1 operating 
system, but i have just the 2.0 version.  is it enough to merely copy/replace
a few system files or MUST i have the upgrade package?

izumi@mindseye.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa) (05/16/91)

In article <9105160024.AA05236@nextasy2.eecs.wsu.edu> dwatola@NEXTASY2.EECS.WSU.EDU (David Watola) writes:
>
>does anyone know:
>is it possible to upgrade from 2.0 to 2.1 without having the "upgrade kit?"
>i have a friend who just bought a new nextstation with the 2.1 operating 
>system, but i have just the 2.0 version.  is it enough to merely copy/replace
>a few system files or MUST i have the upgrade package?
>

It's not A FEW system files.
I don't have exact counts, but it's somewhare between 50-100 files.
I have done exactly this when we got a NeXTstation with 2.1 (standard).
So, you can do it, but it's a lot of hassles.

What I did was to use "find" to figure out which directories
have new files.

Then, tar the whole directories to big file containing everything,
(both old and new), then untar it over the 2.0 system.

As I recall, I did this to /sdmach,
/usr/bin, /usr/lib, /usr/etc, /bin, /usr/ucb, /usr/shlib,
/usr/filesystems, /usr/template.  I may be missing some.

When I untarred /usr/shlib on top of the running system,
Workspace locked up, and I ended up copying tar files to OD,
and had to untar from OD to SCSI disk.

Another thing to note is that unless your friend's station
has 400MB  disk, it only has 2.1 files for standard edition,
and if your system has 2.0 Extended, you will end up with
incomlete updates, 2.1 standard, and 2.0 extended files.

We have run our system for a few weeks with this incomplete system,
and I didn't notice anything obviously bad happening to
the operation of the cubes.

We finally got our update floppies, and the installation
process with Installer is really pleasent (Once you know
how to combine chunked packages into one big package.).

In summary, yes you can do it, but it's a lot of hassle.

Izumi Ohzawa             [ $@Bg_78^=;(J ]
USMail: University of California, 360 Minor Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: (415) 642-6440             Fax:  (415) 642-3323
Internet: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu   NeXTmail: izumi@pinoko.berkeley.edu