Am I missing something
or does anyone knows why the last freebsd advisory while it's affecting all freebsd releases,
gets
Corrected: 2004-12-01 21:33:35 UTC (RELENG_5, 5.3-STABLE)
2004-12-01 21:34:23 UTC (RELENG_5_3, 5.3-RELEASE-p2)
2004-12-01 21:34:43 UTC (RELENG_5_2, 5.2.1-RELEASE-p13)
2004-12-01 21:33:57 UTC (RELENG_4, 4.10-STABLE)
2004-12-01 21:35:10 UTC (RELENG_4_10, 4.10-RELEASE-p5)
2004-12-01 21:35:57 UTC (RELENG_4_8, 4.8-RELEASE-p27)

but nothing for 4.9 ?

Security support for FreeBSD 4.9 ended on October 31st, 2004. EoLed branches may have some security fixes applied to them (e.g., I merged the FreeBSD-SA-04:16.fetch patches onto all the branches from 4.7 forwards, because it was a particularly scary issue), but will not have all security fixes and should not be used for production systems.

Why EV1 Servers is still selling systems running FreeBSD 4.9 right now I really don't know...

We recommend that people use either FreeBSD 4.10 (EoL May 31, 2006), FreeBSD 5.3 (EoL October 31, 2006), or the upcoming "spinal tap" release, FreeBSD 4.11, which will probably have an EoL of January 31, 2007 (but this isn't yet certain; wait for an official announcement).

For more details, including EoL dates for all currently supported branches, please consult the FreeBSD Security Information website.

ok, but why is 4.8 eol 2006 too ?
while 4.9 is already dead ?

I know there are faqs about upgrading, but I would really not want to mess up my system here.

Any step by step how-to upgrade from 4.9 to 4.10
or 5.x for a specific ev1 server ?

Also, I have multiple jails under my 4.9 system at the moment
how do I go for upgrading them , upgrade the outer jail system to 4.10 first then the jail to 4.10 ?
Can a 4.9 jail run under a 4.10 system and the other way around ?

thanks

FreeBSD 4.8 (and 4.10, and 5.3) was designated as an "extended support" branch, meaning it is supported for at least two years after the release date. FreeBSD 4.4, 4.5, 4.6, 4.7, and 4.9 were normal releases, which are supported for at least one year; FreeBSD 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2 were "early adopter" releases, which are supported for at least 6 months (but usually longer).



I suggest that you use cvsup to check out a RELENG_4_10 source tree, then proceed with the usual buildworld / buildkernel / installkernel / installworld / mergemaster stages. Going from 4.9 to 4.10 there are relatively few changes, so this should be very safe.



As far as jails are concerned, the only version mismatch which matters is between the world inside the jail and the kernel outside the jail. As a general rule, you might have problems with some kernel utilities (ps, top, ifconfig) with such a world/kernel mismatch, but your jailed users are quite likely to not be using those anyway.

That said, I suggest that you update both the host system and all of the jails.

ok thanks
will try that,
I've never done it though, any special recommandations as to specificities about ev1 hardware or something else I should be aware of
while performing the different buildworld etc... steps ?

I don't know of any anything unusual with EV1 hardware; but since I don't have a server here (I just drop by the forums from time to time in case there are any FreeBSD questions here), that's not entirely surprising. But I'd be surprised if you had any problems with the usual upgrading mechanisms; FreeBSD 4.x has had a long time to mature and find any problems. :-)