Date: Sat, 23 May 2020 19:37:54 -0600 From: "Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH" <kurt.buff@gmail.com> To: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: updating a FreeBSD workstation Message-ID: <CADy1Ce7sY2%2B5CbzhNo18Mtrp524Bc1mmx_=F%2BCy=DL9-dFvc%2BQ@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <alpine.BSF.2.00.2005230221460.75395@bucksport.safeport.com> References: <alpine.BSF.2.00.2005230221460.75395@bucksport.safeport.com>
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On Sat, May 23, 2020 at 12:39 AM Doug Denault <doug@safeport.com> wrote: > Thoughts/questions on updating a FreeBSD desktop. > > This comes out of the "FreeBSD 12.0 end-of-life" thread. It seems to me there > are two distinct sets of users: server and desktop. There have to be a few like > me with a foot in each camp. I am somewhat in the same situation - I am no longer primarily a sysadmin, but have stood up a few servers, and currently I use a couple of FreeBSD machines on our vSphere cluster, and FreeBSD as my secondary desktop, running as a VM on VMWare Workstation Pro on my personal Win10 laptop and under Hyper-V on my work laptop. > The desktop is a whole different thing. Why yes - it is. :) > My solution has been every so often > start fresh because I can not afford the time to risk a non-working desktop. I have done that a couple of times, but haven't needed to do that in quite a while. But, because the desktops are secondary, and not as heavily used, perhaps that makes a difference. > When the ports moved to being based on the release head I had high hopes. I > think I did not understand what that actually meant. My environment is xfce with > enough stuff to give me something close to my partner's OS/X system. In addition > to the "normal" stuff for me this means having, firefox, chrome, libreoffice, > mysql and tigervnc. This ends up with 625 (or so) ports and packages. I did my > current system in December. I don't use mysql on my desktops (but if I needed a database, I'd use postgresql), otherwise I tend to use things like nmap and other network-centric tools. > In this environment, I have never been able to update firefox or the xfce > desktop/panel components to correct bugs or get a new feature. Hmmm..... I have good results using synth, like "portsnap fetch update && synth upgrade-system" and let it run overnight. I do that whenever the mood strikes, or once a month, whichever comes first. > So for example, when glib-2 56 3_6,1 is updated to glib-2 56 3_6,2 or later, I > can not update using pkg or ports. So I guess the question is, is this a Make > file issue, or is the next version really not compatible? As long as the answer > is, either who knows, or it's the same thing, I am pretty much forced to follow > my pattern of all or nothing updating. This has not really been an issue for me, > I've had no security issues as these systems have always been behind a router > and I also use a basic ipfw configuration. > > So all of this is to ask is the update problem totally a technical one, or a > natural consequence stemming from how the FreeBSD project organized? Can't say - haven't had the problems you're seeing. But again - I'm not a heave desktop user, so perhaps I'm not stressing my system like you are. Kurt
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