installation of 4.0.1 on 386i

[Miles O'Neal]

mit-amt!geek%media-lab.media.mit.edu at eddie.mit.edu (Chris Schmandt) writes:
>The installation instructions for 4.0.1 call for a complete file system
>dump, rebuild the disk, and then restore the rest of the file system.
>Pretty boring, since the options are dumping to floppy (NO!) or over the
>net to a cartridge tape (slow....).

If you are using YP (maybe even just NFS???) Sun says you cannnot mix and
match 4.0 and 4.0.1 on the same network. So that makes the over-the-net
dump tricky...

>I was wondering if anyone has dealt with this and whether there may in
>fact be some subset of files (vmunix, what else??) that I'd need to
>install and leave the rest intact.  As I have a running 4.0.1, that might
>give some flexibility.  If no one has done it but has some tips, I'll post
>a method if I figure it out.  Since 4.0.0 is so flawed, I suspect there's
>a lot of us upgrading our roadrunners this week...

We are writing Sun's marketing people over this - it was annoying but
acceptable going from Beta to 4.0, but is NOT acceptable in regular
release upgrades. I have no suggestions; we bit the bullet, backed up all
3 systems, upgraded, and then, because we don't use YP, fought the stupid
installation procedures for several days to get the systems talking to
each other. We almost had it working, when we found out that the memory
leakage problems that manifest themselves in X11 were MUCH WORSE in 4.0.1;
we had to reboot once a day (or more) instead of once a week. We are now
backing down to 4.0, despite the speed, bug fixes, etc of 4.0.1. The final
network problem we hadn't solved *appears* to be an automounter bug.

By the way, the makefs is, at least in part, done to "optimize" the / and
/usr partitions. The difference in size did not appear to be a big deal.
Look at the disks and see if they are just bar format (other than the
bootable, of course, on the 1st 2 disks). If so, you might be able to pull
it off. We just decided it would take longer than playing by the rules.
Now we wish we had waited altogether!!!

DOSclaimer: These are my *personal* observations on the above situation. I
was tempted not to post until we have been in contact more with Sun, but
since someone else might be getting into this stuff too, I felt obligated.

-Miles (gatech!stiatl!meo)