Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
On Sat 2009-11-07 19:19:52 UTC-0800, Randi Harper (ra...@freebsd.org) wrote: Don't bother with any of that. Just use portsnap. It's also part of base, and was written by the same person that wrote freebsd-update. It's lovely and much faster, although some people may argue with me on that. For your system, use freebsd-update. Seconded. Portsnap and freebsd-update are a cinch to use. For your ports tree, use portsnap. For installed ports, use portupgrade or portmanager. I'm more fond of portmanager, but it seems portupgrade has many more users. Both portupgrade and portmanager are available in the ports tree, not base. I use portmaster and find it easy to use. Not familiar with portmanager. /usr/ports/UPDATING will often provide portmaster commands where necessary and these can useful for upgrading some ports. Maybe it's easy to translate those commands to their equivalent portmanager commands. Regards Andrew ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
andrew clarke writes: Don't bother with any of that. Just use portsnap. It's also part of base, and was written by the same person that wrote freebsd-update. It's lovely and much faster, although some people may argue with me on that. For your system, use freebsd-update. Seconded. Portsnap and freebsd-update are a cinch to use. As for freebsd-update: It has limitations; /inter alia/ see the DESCRIPTION section of the man page. If that's something one can live with, use it. If it's not, then the OP really needs to get familiar with the update-from-source method as described in the Handbook. It's scary at first (actually, it's still a teeny bit scary after ten years). but it helps one understand what goes into making a working system ... which is a really good thing if something does manage to go Horribly Wrong(tm). Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
On Sat, 7 Nov 2009 10:57:54 -0600, Adam Vande More amvandem...@gmail.com wrote: There are three basic branches, CURRENT STABLE RELEASE You want release. You shouldn't run anything else unless you're willing and able to help with testing, debugging, and development. That's a quite generic answer, but basically I agree. On a production system, in most cases RELEASE is the branch you want to follow, beginning from X.Y-RELEASE and then tacking the security updates X.Y-RELEASE-pZ. The tool freebsd-update is very good for this task, especially when you're not running a custom kernel. STABLE is a good solution when you want to use a stable system, but are interested in additions between the releases. Things that are tested and found working are present in STABLE and will often appear in the upcoming RELEASE. CURRENT is interesting for you - as Adam said - for testing and development, and if you are intendedly interested in bleeding edge software. Note that it can happen that a CURRENT system of today won't build, but will tomorrow. It's the development branch. In any case: You should re-install or re-compile ALL of your applications when you perform the step to a new release (e. g. 7.2 - 8.0). You can install the 7-compat port to avoid this (downward compatibility libraries). -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
Hello all, I have another concept that I'm confused about, the source distribution. Some ports, like lsof require the existence of /usr/src. What I don't understand is which version to use to keep synchronized with the production release. When the installed was performed the release was 7.2 but after doing freebsd-update the release is now 7.2-p4. According to the documentation, I can track CURRENT, STABLE plus other. Which one is the recommended one for a production server. I have not build that many packages that need the sources present so now would be a good time to find out which one I should use. Thank you for your time and patience, -r ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:39 AM, Roger rno...@gmail.com wrote: Hello all, I have another concept that I'm confused about, the source distribution. Some ports, like lsof require the existence of /usr/src. What I don't understand is which version to use to keep synchronized with the production release. When the installed was performed the release was 7.2 but after doing freebsd-update the release is now 7.2-p4. According to the documentation, I can track CURRENT, STABLE plus other. Which one is the recommended one for a production server. I have not build that many packages that need the sources present so now would be a good time to find out which one I should use. Thank you for your time and patience, There are three basic branches, CURRENT STABLE RELEASE You want release. You shouldn't run anything else unless you're willing and able to help with testing, debugging, and development. -- Adam Vande More ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
Roger wrote: Hello all, I have another concept that I'm confused about, the source distribution. Some ports, like lsof require the existence of /usr/src. What I don't understand is which version to use to keep synchronized with the production release. When the installed was performed the release was 7.2 but after doing freebsd-update the release is now 7.2-p4. A RELEASE such as 7.2 has a maintenance period during which the security team will apply security patches to the OS. Only the patches are applied, the rest of the bulk of /usr/src is untouched. This is what the -p4 means. The security support period for different releases can be located on the web site. Some releases are designated extended support, while others have shorter time frames. According to the documentation, I can track CURRENT, STABLE plus other. Which one is the recommended one for a production server. I have not build that many packages that need the sources present so now would be a good time to find out which one I should use. I don't use the binary freebsd-update myself, but still use the old csup the source in /usr/src and the make buildworld/buildkernel/install dance. So I tend to think in terms of CVS tags. The tag RELENG_7_2_0_RELEASE would fetch the original release bits that never change. The tag RELENG_7_2 would fetch the /usr/src that has the security patches applied. The -p4 you observed means that freebsd-update used binaries built with security patches applied. If there exists any question as to whether your /usr/src is in sync you can simply csup your source with the RELENG_7_2 tag in the supfile. There is also another way to patch, and that is to apply patches manually. Let's say, for example, the built in bind had a file or two that got patched. You could rebuild just this one thing and after installing the bits simply restart the daemon. Sometimes this is preferred when one needs to prevent a security hole but doesn't want to reboot a server. A downside is when you do this it does not register the -p4 like you noticed. For a production server I feel it is best to use production release. IMHO there is one possible cause to consider STABLE for a production server and that is if there is new code Merged From Current that addresses and corrects a very specific problem. Let's say you have a particular NIC in your server that is exhibiting an exact same (and reproducible) condition as described in a bug report. If code which fixes this exact problem becomes available it will be written in CURRENT, and after some testing if deemed to be of sufficient quality it will be merged back to STABLE. Upgrading to STABLE will then pull in this fix. IMHO I wouldn't normally consider this unless there is an exact match between problem and fix. -Mike ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
On Sat, Nov 07, 2009 at 11:39:41AM -0500, Roger wrote: Hello all, I have another concept that I'm confused about, the source distribution. Some ports, like lsof require the existence of /usr/src. What I don't understand is which version to use to keep synchronized with the production release. When the installed was performed the release was 7.2 but after doing freebsd-update the release is now 7.2-p4. According to the documentation, I can track CURRENT, STABLE plus other. Which one is the recommended one for a production server. I have not build that many packages that need the sources present so now would be a good time to find out which one I should use. Thank you for your time and patience, -r You mentioned lsof but there is a utility in base which you probably don't know about called fstat(1), which does a lot of what lsof does. IIRC, the sources for 7.2 should be on the CD (run sysinstall(8) after sticking the CD in). That will save you from downloading all the sources. Then update the sources with csup(1) using the correct tag: RELENG_7_2 There's a supfile, /usr/share/examples/cvsup/standard-supfile, which you can change the default host and cvs tag of and it should work. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvsup.html goes into the details. Regards, -- Frank Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 3:20 PM, Frank Shute fr...@shute.org.uk wrote: You mentioned lsof but there is a utility in base which you probably don't know about called fstat(1), which does a lot of what lsof does. Thank you for the tip. I will definitely look into it. IIRC, the sources for 7.2 should be on the CD (run sysinstall(8) after sticking the CD in). That will save you from downloading all the sources. Then update the sources with csup(1) using the correct tag: RELENG_7_2 There's a supfile, /usr/share/examples/cvsup/standard-supfile, which you can change the default host and cvs tag of and it should work. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvsup.html goes into the details. Regards, -- Frank Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Help understanding basic FreeBSD concepts (ports, updates, jails)
On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Roger rno...@gmail.com wrote: My second concerned is the ports. In the file ports-supfile there is one option, *default release=cvs tag=.. I believe this specifies which cvs tag to use when pulling files from the ports. At one point I had *default release=cvs tag=RELEASE_7_2_0. When I pulled the ports using the RELEASE_7_2_0 tag and tried to build portsupgrade the installation failed because the ruby version that was going to be installed I believe had a security problem. (I love the fact that I was stopped from installing software that is KNOWN to be vulnerable). I figured that maybe I needed to get the latest version. So I went ahead and changed the cvs tag to . (which I believe means the head version). Don't bother with any of that. Just use portsnap. It's also part of base, and was written by the same person that wrote freebsd-update. It's lovely and much faster, although some people may argue with me on that. I updated the ports and then tried the installation again, this time the installation went further but failed again due to the fact that my libtool (I can't remember the exact name) was older than what the installation required. So that threw me off. I believe that libtool is part of the base system and not the ports, correct? So that made me think that maybe because of using the latest version of the ports I can build certain ports if my base is not concurrent (in terms of what the ports requires and what my system offers) with the port system. So my question is this, if my FreeBSD release is 7.2-RELEASE-p4 which tag should I set for the ports system? Should I put the tag RELEASE_7_2_0 and then wait for a security fix of the particular port (ruby) and then proceed to install? What is the recommended approach if your aim is to have your system up to date and stable? For your system, use freebsd-update. For your ports tree, use portsnap. For installed ports, use portupgrade or portmanager. I'm more fond of portmanager, but it seems portupgrade has many more users. Both portupgrade and portmanager are available in the ports tree, not base. -- randi ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
