From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Mar 14 08:37:50 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9B98316A4CE for ; Sun, 14 Mar 2004 08:37:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from main.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.224.249]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CE44943D2D for ; Sun, 14 Mar 2004 08:37:49 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from freebsd-questions@m.gmane.org) Received: from list by main.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1B2YcW-0005OH-00 for ; Sun, 14 Mar 2004 17:37:48 +0100 Received: from 213-203-244-156.kunde.vdserver.de ([213.203.244.156]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 14 Mar 2004 17:37:48 +0100 Received: from kai by 213-203-244-156.kunde.vdserver.de with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Sun, 14 Mar 2004 17:37:48 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: Kai Grossjohann Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 17:37:56 +0100 Lines: 46 Message-ID: <874qsrwfiz.fsf@emptyhost.emptydomain.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 213-203-244-156.kunde.vdserver.de User-Agent: Gnus/5.110002 (No Gnus v0.2) Emacs/21.2 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:mOu7ylax6vNTJVs0GHRaxbiiMuk= Sender: news Subject: Binary upgrades? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 14 Mar 2004 16:37:50 -0000 I'm trying to convince my cow-orkers and my boss to switch to FreeBSD from Debian GNU/Linux. The systems we are talking about are workstations (desktop or laptop PCs), our servers are running Solaris. So far, my experience with FreeBSD has been running on my home computer. There, I use "portupgrade -avR" for upgrading the ports, and the procedure described in /usr/src/UPDATING for upgrading the base system. Some of us will want to just use the machine, without bothering about the configuration. Others will act as sysadmins, tweaking the configuration. I've already pretty much decided that cfengine will be our friend -- it allows us to tweak the configuration incrementally, and all those who don't want to think about it will get the config changes automatically. Now comes the issue of upgrading the system. I understand that this will be fairly easy for the ports collection: just nfs-mount the right directories, and pass "-pP" to the portupgrade program. Maybe those who don't want to think about it can say "portupgrade -avRPP". (Is this the right command?) But for the base system, I'm not so sure. I've read the chapter in the handbook talking about nfs-mounting /usr/obj and /usr/src. But that still requires people to do shutdown now cd /usr/src mergemaster -p make installkernel installworld mergemaster Is this correct? I wonder if this could be made easier. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a method of doing binary upgrades already. For example, if we decided to track releases, would that enable us to do binary upgrades using sysinstall, say? I vaguely remember having seen an upgrade option in there... I guess I just haven't read the right documentation, yet. Normally, with FreeBSD, one doesn't need to ask the community, one just reads the documentation ;-) Kai