From owner-freebsd-stable Sun May 30 0:54: 8 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from guru.phone.net (guru.phone.net [209.157.82.120]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3E69A14C0B for ; Sun, 30 May 1999 00:54:01 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mwm@phone.net) Received: (qmail 24539 invoked by uid 100); 30 May 1999 07:54:00 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 30 May 1999 07:54:00 -0000 Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 00:54:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Mike Meyer To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [Q] How stable is FreeBSD 3.X ? In-Reply-To: <374D85CE.6FAC3AB8@newsguy.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 28 May 1999, Daniel C. Sobral wrote: > > You may not know - I did. Even things that were only read at startup > > could generally be dealt with by restarting just the process that read > > that. Of course, if that process was the kernel or init, you wound up > > rebooting anyway. And in some cases, the chain of things that depended > > on that change was complex enough that rebooting was simpler. > You don't need to always reboot FreeBSD either. Of course, most > people don't know when it's ok and when it is not. So, the same > applies. The documented and supported method of applying a patch is to shut the system down and do a "make world" (or "make isntallworld"). As I recall sun's patches, only those that actually changed the system configuration in some way asked that you reboot the system. As above, that's broader than what's required if you know what you're doing, but it's still a lot finer grained than "make world." > > For yet another difference - not even Sun recommends installing > > *every* fix. FreeBSD doesn't have any other option. > Eh? We have the whole cvs available. You can easily make partial > upgrades. But those aren't supported! Reporting a problem with such a process here brought ire down upon me - and justifiably so, for not having read the docs. After all, you've got the sources - so you can create patcheson your own. But that's not supported, any more than editing binaries to create "patches" on Suns is supported. > > Note that I'm *not* proposing such a system for FreeBSD! Merely > > pointing out that the differences is very noticable. > Still not noticiable to me. It's a black box. Aside from saying "it > takes much longer", there is not effective difference. Sorry, but I don't agree. With a patch system, I apply the patches to systems that have problems, or if it's a security patch, to those systems at risk - and that's what the distribution mechanism supports. With FreeBSD, building anything but a snapshot of the source isn't supported. Both allow finer control than that - but those technics aren't supported by either one.