From owner-freebsd-questions Wed May 30 9:22:23 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from clmboh1-smtp3.columbus.rr.com (clmboh1-smtp3.columbus.rr.com [65.24.0.112]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B159F37B422 for ; Wed, 30 May 2001 09:22:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wmoran@iowna.com) Received: from iowna.com (dhcp065-024-023-038.columbus.rr.com [65.24.23.38]) by clmboh1-smtp3.columbus.rr.com (8.11.2/8.11.2) with ESMTP id f4UGJ6k05136; Wed, 30 May 2001 12:19:07 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3B151DE6.DD7A47E5@iowna.com> Date: Wed, 30 May 2001 12:20:54 -0400 From: Bill Moran X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (X11; U; FreeBSD 4.3-STABLE i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Don Dugger Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: upgrades [each time more trouble] References: <000101c0e91a$208e6bc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <3B151B2B.6232E53C@hotlz.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Don Dugger wrote: > > Let me start by saying that upgrading any OS is a problem. With Windoze > the bugs it introduces are hidden by the general buggy nature of the OS. > My customer on Sun usually wait until Sun no longer supports the version > there on before upgrading, and same with HP UX. Redhat has done a great > deal of work to make upgrades easier with varying success. > > Having said that, I too feel that FreeBSD community has put less effort > in making upgrades easier. I started with FreeBSD 1.5 and some upgrades > went well and other gave me problems. In all cases they were an effort, > which I did not look forward to. There has been a project in work > towards this as far back as I've been using FreeBSD, but it seems not > mush progress has been made. I think this maybe due to the fact that the > effort has been to make the install easier rather then the upgrade > easier. I have seen HOW TOs, but there usually out of date with each > release. I tried writing scripts to reinstall the packages and ports, > but with release they had to modified. > > Now having said that, I would rather use FreeBSD then any other OS. I'm > bring this up to see what others think and what sort of solution others > are using. I'm curious, when you say upgrade are you talking about the binary upgrade procedure? I didn't get the impression that the original poster was talking about that, but I may be wrong. Can't really comment on that, since I've never used it. With regards to Ted's earlier posts, my servers never get upgraded unless a security problem is announced that poses a threat to that particular server, or hardware gets replaced. My personal workstation (which uses FreeBSD exclusively) was installed with a clean 4.0-RELEASE and has been upgraded every month or so (via cvsup) ever since. I think the mergemaster system is fantastic, and I've had no problems with ports. When I upgrade ports, I back up config files, do a pkg_delete of the old version and any dependencies and then reinstall the port from scratch and merge the old config files back in. This is somewhat time consuming, but I've never had any problems. The cvsup system and make world system are incredible. I want to take a minute to congratulate everyone who's involved in that for keeping it working so well. I, too, prefer FreeBSD to anything else I've used. I occasionally get an itching to see what all the Linux fuss is about, and install it somewhere to play with, but I've never actually used Linux for anything. -Bill -- If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, then what can I get for two hands in the bush? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message