FreeBSD: How To Upgrade FreeBSD 7 to 8 Stable Release

FreeBSD 7.x allows upgrade of existing installation to FreeBSD 8.0-STABLE. Since this is a major version upgrade, it is recommended that you backup your data, database and configuration files.

This guide will walk a user through updating his source to follow FreeBSD's stable branch.  Please make a full backup of the current system before following this guide.

STEP 1: Syncing the source tree

- cvsup installation and configuration

# cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup-without-gui

# make install clean

OR

# pkg_add -r cvsup-without-gui

Copy the sample supfile for Stable to /usr/local/etc/stable-supfile:

# cp /usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supfile /usr/local/etc/

Edit file and set host name which specifies the server host which will supply the file updates to your system.

*default host=cvsup1.us.FreeBSD.org

Set release tag to stable 8:

*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_8

Run cvsup to download the latest stable source:

# cvsup -L 2 /usr/local/etc/stable-supfile

When the cvsup has completed, change to the /usr/src directory