From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jan 4 8:34:21 2001 From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 4 08:34:18 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3C2D537B69B for ; Thu, 4 Jan 2001 08:34:12 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 36463 invoked by uid 100); 4 Jan 2001 16:34:11 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <14932.42499.98587.860090@guru.mired.org> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 10:34:11 -0600 (CST) To: freebsd-questions@leonini.ch Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: system management In-Reply-To: <61013552@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG freebsd-questions@leonini.ch types: > The problem with Linux is: > > 1_ There is lot of way to manage software (rpm, deb, source, ...) > and if you use different software manager (like combining source > and > rpm), you have inconsistency in the rpm database. For my server I > generally used source, because the applications I compiled (like > appache-PHP) require a lot of parameters that an rpm can't hold. > And with rpm, you can't easily have multiple instance of a > programm > running. FreeBSD doesn't have this problem. The ports system (which builds from source) and the package system are nicely integrated. If you install sources from other than the ports system, you may have problems. However, you can create a port for that, and install it even if it's not put into the official ports tree (but do send-pr it so it can be put in the ports tree)! > 2_ There is not a simple way to make your system completly > evolving. I mean that is quite impossible to pass from a release X to > a release Y of a distribution with package update only. The main > problem is to update the glibc. Not a problem with FreeBSD. The same people who maintain the distribution maintain the c library. > But, can we really in FreeBSD update a 3.X release to an 4.X or 5.X > doing a CVSUP and then a make world ? Yes. If you're going from an a.out system to an elf system, you'll need to do a "make ugprade" as well. > Do you really use "make world" on server, taking the risk of a > potential problem ? Some people report doing that, but I don't. On production machines, I do: make buildworld make buildkernel make installkernel reboot # to single user mode make installworld mergemaster reboot to verify that the kernel will boot before doing the make installworld. > There is a way to configure the system (using a cron job) to get via > CVS the latest release of all the software already installed (and > only the software already installed), and if there is new release to > "make install" them ? (My dream is to do that automatically, like > that I don't need to manually update the system, when there is a > urgent vulnerability, for example.) In theory, yes. In practice, I wouldn't recommend it because the mergemaster step above requires intelligent interaction. You could skip it and run it after rebooting, but that's a bit dangerous. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message